Can Electric Skateboards go Uphill? With Comparison Table

If you’re wondering whether you can ride with your electric skateboard uphill – then this article is exactly for you.

To keep it short: Yes, normally electric skateboards should be able to ride uphills. But it depends on what kind of electric skateboard you own.

If you ever have had a normal skateboard or longboard then your solution is finally here! With a normal skateboard, it’s relatively easy to roll flat or slow downgrading slopes but it’s definitely not fun to push yourself and the board uphill. Sometimes you need to walk because it’s too steep.

Table of contents

If you are living up or down a hill, or if your work way is tied to going up or downhill. Then an electric skateboard could be your perfect commute solution. But not every eboard is made for going uphill constantly. Therefore you want to be sure that the board meets the required specs for going up.

With powerful electric skateboards like the “Raptor 2” or the “Evolve Boards” you can go up to 25% gradient uphill. Which is very steep by the way. With cheap boards, you can go uphill between 5% and 20% gradient. I’ve created a table with electric board types and the associated stats. The information was researched from the brand websites. So these provided stats are form official sources.

Comparison table

Electric SkateboardIncline Gradient
Acton Blink S220%
Acton Blink Qu4tro30%
AEBOARD AE130%
AEBOARD AT230%
Backfire Galaxy G2t25%
Backfire Ranger X130%
Boosted Board Mini S20%
Boosted Mini X20%
Boosted Plus25%
Boosted Stealth25%
Enertion Raptor 2.130 %
Evolve GTR30%
Evolve GTR All Terrain30%
Evolve GT25%
Evolve GT All Terrain25%
Exway X1 Pro30%
Inboard M1No official information
Liftboard Dual25%
Meepo V330%
Meepo NLS Pro30%
Meepo City Rider30%
OneWheel + XRNo official information
OneWheel PintNo official information
Ownboard W230%
Ownboard W1S30%
Riptide Boards25%
Starkbaord15%
Verreal V1S30%
WowGo 330%
WowGo 2S30%

If you’ve liked this table than check out my ultimate Sortable e-Board Comparison Table here. I have even built a Drag and Drop Tool with which you can compare your favorite electric skateboard models! It took me days to create it, you will love it!

myself riding uphill

Key factors for riding uphill on an electric skateboard

Key factors to consider when riding with an electric skateboard uphill are:

  • Gradient percentage
  • Weight
  • Motor power
  • Torque
  • Battery capacity

Gradient / incline

The gradient is the most important factor to consider driving uphill. The higher the gradient incline the more power or less weight you need. Budget electric skateboard should climb a gradient of up to 5%. a normal electric skateboard should go up an incline of 5 to 15 %. The premium electric skateboards with very strong Motors and a lot of power can go up to 30% gradient.

Weight

The weight of the rider is clearly very important to consider when driving uphill. The heavier a rider is the more power he needs to drive up hills. With a normal weight of 70 kg, you should go uphill with a normal to premium electric skateboards easily. If you weigh more than 80 kg maybe you should consider getting a premium and very powerful electric skateboard.

If you want to learn more about electric skateboards and their weight, check out my blog post.

Motor power

The more power you have the better you can climb with your electric a skateboard a hill. A few hundred Watt is crucial for climbing uphill. They’re all different motor types as well. There are single wheel motors, dual wheel motors, and 4×4 motors as well. With single wheel Motors you can climb uphill but not as steep as with the motortypes. For example the “Yuneec ego 2” which has a single motor can climb up a hill up to 10% gradient. Double or dual motor electric skateboards can climb up a hill from 10 to 30% gradient. The most powerful motor the 4 x 4 wheel motor can climb uphill up to 30% gradient.

Torque

The torque is tied to motor power. If you want to go uphill with your electric skateboard you want to be sure that your torque is strong enough. That means that your electric skateboard is optimized on torque performance. Speed and torque are inversely proportional to each other. That means if you change a part in your electric skateboard drive train to increase the top speed you will lose torque performance and reversely.

Components that can change either top speed or torque performance: wheels (diameter), gearing ratio, pulley (diameter).

Battery Capacity

When riding an electric skateboard uphill the motor needs a lot of power and therefore a lot of battery capacity. If you drive with full throttle a very Steep Hill for example 20% gradient you will drain the battery very fast. So you need to bear in mind that you don’t have the normal range when you drive up hills. The range will drastically decline when driving uphills. For this reason, it is important having a large battery capacity or conserving the battery with various riding techniques. If you want to learn more about electric skateboard batteries, how long they last, and get some battery saving tips check out my article on batteries by clicking here.

Additional things to consider when riding uphills

Battery charge

The range will drastically decline when driving uphills. For this reason, it is important having a large battery capacity or conserving the battery with various riding techniques.

How not to drain the battery | conserving battery charge – techniques

  • Avoid riding full speed when going uphill.
  • Avoid fast acceleration when going uphill.
  • Avoid driving against strong winds when going uphill when possible.
  • Accelerate smoothly or even kick push the e-board from a total stop to accelerate and then slowly add motor power.
  • Ride in eco mode instead of pro, fast or sport mode, if available

I have written a Guide on electric skateboard batteries with tips how to save battery charge. You can get to it via this link.

Going back – riding downhill

Keep in your head that you have to ride the same way downhill as you have ridden uphill.

What goes up have to come down.

And this is very important because going downhill with an electric skateboard can be very dangerous. Although e-skateboards have a regenerative braking system and therefore breaking is a lot easier it can be very dangerous driving downhill. What if is your braking system fails, you should be prepared. Driving downhill with high speeds can build up “speed wobbles”. Then your e-skateboard moves very quickly side to side. It feels like the e-skateboard is swinging. These fast small slalom turns can quickly thor you off the board. Just small changes in body posture can occur in an accident.
Therefore you should be used to drive with high speeds and to control speed wobbles. To be perfectly safe you should be able to perform an emergency brake when the normal regenerative braking system of your board fails. Don’t have a helmet yet? Check out my blog post on electric skateboard helmets that actually look nice.

And please wear a helmet when riding downhill! 

Here is a little treat for you. It is a video from the Electric Skateboard YouTuber “Fabian Doerig” in which he is riding up and downhill in San Francisco. A beautiful video in which we can see the power of electric skateboards.

Is it dangerous to ride uphill?

Normally no. It is not very dangerous to ride uphill. But If you live in San Francisco or a very urban area where you have to ride a lot up- and downhill. Then maybe yes, because in this case, you have to watch the traffic, road conditions,  street signs, and your board performance. This could be -especially for beginners- overwhelming. Unless you drive on very busy roads it is not very dangerous for yourself. But it could be dangerous for your board. Normally you have to apply a lot of power and therefore drain the battery drastically to maintain performance driving up hills. For the motor and for the battery these heavy driving conditions are not very good.

Conclusion

So yes you can ride an electric skateboard uphill. In fact, it’s quite common that people use electric skateboards to get up a hill. It is much more convenient riding an electric skateboard over pushing a normal skateboard up hills. If you live up a hill or you need to go up a hill frequently then you should consider buying a board which is very powerful and has a large battery capacity. Additionally, you can change some components or you’re driving technique to better your ascending ride.

2 thoughts on “Can Electric Skateboards go Uphill? With Comparison Table”

  1. Hey Daniel,

    I’m so glad I found this website. Thank you for your passion in this genre. I have a couple of questions. 1. Are you a fan of the Ownboard Zeus Pro? It seems to be the one that best suits my needs. I’m interested in saving some money per year and this board in theory could save me up to 900 the first year and up to 1500 after that. Obviously batteries will wear out and that will factor in decreased savings but for a public school teacher that savings is a great Christmas for my kids. Standing in at 6’3″ and a combined weight of 210, I will have to combat 2 or 3 steep hills to work, I need a board that can go about 15 miles and sometimes go offroad on grass and loose gravel for short distances. The Ownboard with pnematic tires seems to be sufficient. There are great reviews on Youtube, but none that talk about real world range for a 200 pound person. Every video is flat rides and how far they can go as a 160 pound person. I saw one where this dude is 145, 145!! My wife is 135! Cripes!! It’s laughable, none of my friends are 160, who the hell is 160 in America???!!. Any thoughts or suggestions would be great. Thank you

    Reply

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