WEARING YOUR FOIL DRIVE™

Foil Drive™ would like to make a statement regarding the use of the battery box in a ‘back-pack’ configuration, or when attached to your body in any way.

We love that customers are enjoying the product in new and innovative ways, but we do want to make sure it is being used appropriately. We recognise that it is totally within the rights of anyone to use their personal property in any way they choose, we feel it is important to make people aware of the potential danger and increased risk to the equipment of using the product in this way.

We have designed the Assist and the Assist Plus systems to be used while being securely attached to a suitable board, and as such for safety and product reliability reasons, they should only be used in this way. 

The cable gland we use to secure the cable to the box is designed to seal the cable entering the box and can withstand the weight of the box and battery combined (approx. 2.5 kg). It is NOT designed to withstand the sudden and aggressive pulling force of an entire person yanking on the box and cable.

The copper cable is not stretchy, and if excessive force is applied to the copper strands they can snap, preventing your motor from working. It is also possible that you can tear the cable gland out of the box or out of your integrated mast and damage your system.

To put this into perspective, the pulling force of an 85kg person compared to the 2.5kg electronics box is 35x MORE than it is designed to cope with.

Image hitching a 70,000kg trailer onto the back of a car that is rated for 2,000kg towing capacity and expecting the brakes / car to cope.

Our support staff are trained to look for and diagnose a range of issues arising from normal use. For example, it is extremely difficult for support staff to diagnose why a motor will not spin if you snap the copper strands and damage the cable internally as this simply NEVER happens from normal use. In addition to this, when copper strands are damaged in this way, it can take weeks of use before it causes motor failure, which makes it even harder for our staff to diagnose. Unless the customer is forthcoming with the information, they provide regarding how they have been using the product, our staff would never think to assume the cable is broken internally.

Going back to the car/trailer analogy, if you took your car to a garage for repair with brake failure, and you do not tell the mechanic that you were towing a 70,000kg trailer, the mechanic could end up wasting a lot of time trying to work out why the brakes have failed.

We try extremely hard to support everyone, but when people expect us to warrant and support misuse of the product it becomes very difficult for Foil Drive™. There is also an increased safety concern with using an electrical cable as a leash (or even simply when connecting a rider to their board alongside a separate leash), especially when used in the surf.


If you have any questions please don't hesitate to email us on [email protected]