we actually dont have to speculate. it is obvious.
check it: Future Motion is a worldwide company that is authorized to retail potentially dangerous products, build and store them without oversight, ship them in the mail, in airplanes, and overseas. speaking of overseas, thats where all their pcb manufacturing and lithium battery cells are sourced and imported from(china). companies need to be insured in order to operate. whether the insurance that covers employees or a physical space where explosive batteries packs are assembled and stored, to individual five or six figure component shipments.
also regulatory bodies that govern company status: IRS, FCC, FAA, USPS, DOT, CPSC, equivalent Californian agencies, possible international trade oversight agencies require you to be insured in order to license you. no insurance, no sales, no product no company.
insurance companies, on the other hand, are governed by actuarial math and underwriters that: do not want to take risks and don’t have to. this in practice gives the insurance company damn near unlimited and infinite ability to force a company to do just about anything they demand as a liability concession. you cant really fault onewheel CEbrO guy. his hands are tied. hes living his dream, making these things, employing people, doing as much as hes allowed to. but the company its infrastructure turned out to ya know, not exactly how he imagined when it began, as each regulatory hurdle clears, the independent, “this is my business, ill do it how i want” atmosphere, the start up culture that once was, erodes. compromises are made. and any one of us would do the same.
and one day, vow, and indyspeed, and fungineers are going to draw the attention of the to whoevers job it is to enforce H.R. 973, or Reese’s Law, or someone will sue them after thekr kid dies (and these companies will be absolutley gutted by high powered personal injury lawyers during litigation. when they are compared to the gold standard in limiting liability for PEV manufacturers –Future Motion–in court, they will have no grounds to claim they did anything whatsoever to try and keep their consumers safe and alive.
given enough time and scale, sometime between building a board in your garage and selling it to a stranger and becoming and international vehicle for savage house firesand and snapped collarbones, any similar company will have to pay, make similar decisiona, or find a new gig to make their nut.
Future Motion and Kyle Doerksen get a lot of flak but its important to realize: there was no option to do it differently. the limiting of the power of boards, etc, were not descisions made. they were demands acquiesced.
source: 10 years of doing Drug Harm Reduction Outreach at the largest music festivals across the country discovering the complex interplay of competing agencies, regulators, and the underwriters of mandatory insurance agencies and how descions that put people at risk are not made by event organizers, and not negotiable. because liability.
liability is the cornerstone of the legislative and justice systems, and is the reason you cant have a medium rare burger at a chain restaurant, why you cant provide safe spaces for people having difficult psychedelic experiences at events, cant have end-user modifiable pevs. hell its why the stigma around drug use, addiction, treatment & recovery looks like it does..