Shane Chen is obsessed with transportation. The 59-year-old inventor has designed unicycles, skateboards and fitness devices, manufactured by his Portland, Washington-based company, Inventist. Beijing-born Chen moved to the US in the 80s and worked as a scientific-instruments designer before developing his own projects.
Then in 2011, he invented the Hovertrax - a motorised board on wheels. Sound familiar? It's being sold by the million as the "hoverboard", but Inventist isn't distributing it - nor is it making money from it. So what's it like to see an innovation commercialised by copycats?
**WIRED: what was the original idea behind the Hovertrax?**Shane Chen: I thought that by having two separate foot platforms, we could stand on a motored board and use our feet to balance. I invented it for indoors: the wheels are too small for outside. It would need a 16-inch wheel at least, like the Solowheel, one of my other inventions. I created the Solowheel in 2010 and the Hovertrax in 2011, but we didn't make it until 2013. That's when Chinese knock-off factories started copying it.
And how do you feel seeing your invention being copied?Seven of my inventions have been copied: the Aquaskipper, a human-powered watercraft; Orbitwheels, which are like skates but with wheels in which you insert your feet; kitchen gadgets Fizz Saver and Leantisserie; the battery charger Alkacharger; and the Solowheel. And now the Hovertrax. There are almost 1,000 factories in China that make 22,000 of them every day. We've sold fewer than 10,000 units ourselves.
You visited some of these factories. What was that like?They make the copies under 230W, with a very weak battery. It needs enough power so if you hit a rock, or if you're jerking, it can prevent you from falling. The low-cost version is too weak. And many catch fire because they're not properly wired to these low-cost batteries. They offered to manufacture for me, but my version would cost much more. It's impossible to sell Hoverboards for $300 (£214) that are secure and of good quality. Of course, they said theirs were fine, because they're making money.
For the copies of my other inventions, we sued, and when we sued a few, the copies would stop. But with the Hovertrax, you sue a few and more come up. I see it everywhere in California, so I actually feel proud. Even as a copy, it's still my invention.
I grew up in China and came to the US in 1986. China was a communist country with a system based on sharing. They don't have the concept of intellectual property. When they see something good, they feel like they can use it. It's getting better, but I can't really blame them. They're in the learning process.
Although some people say you didn't invent the hoverboard...I just tell them to look at who first filed the patent. There's a date on it. If someone found an earlier date patent, they would be right. One guy, John Soibatian, said he's the inventor. He said that because he was trying to get away from our lawsuit: his company IO HAWK sells hoverboards made by Chic, a Chinese knock-off, the first copier. When this story didn't stand any more, he said Chic invented it. I went to the Chic factory and they asked me to license it to them. They wouldn't have offered that if they were the inventors. I'm suing IO HAWK for patent infringement. They're reselling the Chinese copies.
**You're a serial inventor. What's your working process?**I work on five or six projects simultaneously. The low-cost factories only need one month to make a product, while I need years - that's the difference between the copy and the invention. I look at an object and wonder how I can make it better. For our Lunicycle I thought: what if I mounted a moveable leg support to the foot platform?
It takes a long time to learn to ride unicycles, but with the Lunicycle it takes half an hour. It's the invention I'm the most proud of, because Solowheel and Hovertrax use already existing technologies - auto-balancing, electronic circuits. But the Lunicycle could have been invented 100 years ago. I solved a problem people couldn't solve for a hundred years!
What's your dream invention?Something that can fly without using wings. About ten years ago, I created a human-powered winged aeroplane. You use leg power to push and make the wings move up and down. Our leg power is much stronger than our arms', because we walk every day. A student group at Toronto University made it fly above five feet for one mile. But it's not practical and it's too dangerous. The human body is not built to give that much energy. Still... it'd be fun to fly.
Would you be able to create the hoverboard from Back to the Future Part II?I don't know. That's a completely different concept, you have to lift off the ground. Like the Lexus Hoverboard, which I don't think is a real thing, it's an anti-gravity device. We don't have the physics knowledge yet. If it were real, nobody would want to drive a car on wheels any more!
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
