Hoverboard Turns Off by Itself or Throws You Off at Random
Time Required:
15 Minutes
Problem:
Hoverboard Turns Off by Itself
Cause:
Battery management system (BMS) detects a problem and disconnects power.
Solution:
Replace the battery (how to install hoverboard battery).
Parts:
Hoverboard Shuts Off While Riding
You're probably here because you're concerned about a problem with your hoverboard related to it cutting out or turning off while riding. Other related complaints to this include:
- Hoverboard turns off by itself.
- Hoverboard throws you off at random.
The problem is strangely easy to repair, and the most common cause of this happening is related to the battery. Therefore, the best way to repair this problem is to replace the battery with a new one.
Why a Hoverboard Turns Off by Itself
A hoverboard will turn itself off when a fault is detected in the battery management system of the battery pack itself. You see, a hoverboard battery pack doesn't just contain a battery; it actually contains 20 battery cells made of lithium ion size 18650. These battery cells are then soldered together and daisy-chained into what is called a BMS, otherwise known as a battery management system or battery protection board.
A battery protection board looks just like a typical circuit board that you would see in a computer, and is usually green. The function of the BMS is to detect that the battery is operating within its safety limits. Batteries that operate outside of this safety area for too long are prone to serious problems, such as expanding, catching fire, or even blowing fire at extreme temperatures.
The temperatures that a defective lithium ion battery can reach is astronomical. These temperatures are so hot that they've been known to burn down homes, burn holes in asphalt, and much more.
With that being said, if your hoverboard is randomly stopping, cutting off, or throwing you off, that just means that your BMS is working properly and you needn't worry too much. The system is cutting off the power to the hoverboard so it won't cause danger.
How to Stop Hoverboard from Throwing You Off
So, as you now know that the battery BMS is kicking in whenever it throws you off the hoverboard, you may still be curious as to why the BMS is kicking on in the first place. Typically, the BMS on a hoverboard battery turns off by itself because it has detected a problem with the battery pack. The most common problems include
- Hoverboard battery operating outside of its safe operating area.
- Cells are not properly balanced, with some voltages dipping below a specific level.
- The temperature of the hoverboard battery may be too high.
- The state of charge (SOC) in the hoverboard battery may be too low.
- The state of health (SOH) in the battery may not be safe.
- The current in and/or out of the battery may be incorrect.
Why Does a Hoverboard Battery Instantly Die?
While the extent of our knowledge for batteries may be limited to what we can search for on Google, we do have a lot of experience with hoverboard technology and see problems with hoverboards that throw people off all of the time.
What will usually happen is that the rider will be going along at a decent speed, such as between 3 mph and 6 mph and the hoverboard will stop balancing instantly. When that happens, the hoverboard usually will not turn on after it suddenly shut off, and won't turn on until the hoverboard is plugged back into power again.
What To Do if Your Hoverboard Suddenly Stops Balancing
I hope that you now understand what to do if your hoverboard suddenly stops balancing, and that is to buy a hoverboard replacement battery. This repairs over 95% of all hoverboards that have a sudden power failure.
----ONLY READ THE FOLLOWING SECTION AFTER YOU'VE TRIED THE ABOVE FIX----
Further Reading - If Replacing the Battery Doesn't Work
On very rare occasions, replacing the battery in a hoverboard to fix the random stopping problem will not work. In this instance, you would want to check the hoverboard motors to see if there are loose wires or an underlying problem related to an inconsistency in voltage between the battery's power and the motor itself.
Defective Hoverboard Motor
The primary cause for this would be that the motor is defective. Reasons behind being defective include the motor having internal magnetic field problems, or there is a lack of magnetic flux. These issues, again, are caused by a large difference in the battery capacity and the necessary current protection that is required to operate these heavy hoverboard motors.
Under normal circumstances, the motors have one ore more hall wires, and typically have the circuit board sensor attached directly to the rotor itself. There may be a wire that is loose here, and if that is the case, soldering it back together or gluing it back down may be a way to repair a broken hoverboard motor.
There may be a way to use a multimeter to measure the voltage of the motor as well. However, as mentioned above, we are not engineers here so we won't advise as to how you would go about measuring this. From our experience a multimeter isn't going to work as well as measuring with an LC meter.
Conclusion
Most likely, you're best off buying a replacement hoverboard battery to repair a hoverboard that stops randomly. If that doesn't work, then you may have to buy a replacement hoverboard motor, or two.
Related Customer Questions
Question 1
Q. The hoverboard shut off and threw my daughter off and it won't come back on. It was completely charged a few minutes before. So I go to charge it again, because that's the only way it comes on at all. And the battery icon is orange, but the light indicating the hoverboard is charged is green.
A. Your hoverboard battery is actually bad. It LOOKS like its fully charged, but its actually not. This is a very common problem and we're positive that this is the case. I highly suggest that you purchase a new hover board battery and replace the one you have.