Following in the footsteps of electric scooters on land and wakeboards at sea, young entrepreneurs are bringing electric power to snow travel with self-propelled skis and all-terrain skates.
Already an experienced surfer and snowboarder, Edouard Aubert took up skateboarding during the pandemic, as he was drawn to the empty roads.
“Since I’m an engineer, I quickly put a motor on it,” he said with a grin at the CES technology show in Las Vegas.
“But we needed more. Roads weren’t enough for us, and neither was off-roading. We needed sand, snow.”
While electric skateboards were abundant, “there was nothing for off-roading,” said Adrien Ladan, Aubert’s former schoolmate and business partner.
The two Frenchmen launched SQ-Motors to develop the Sternboard, a three-wheeled board capable of reaching speeds over 60 km/h on a track.
Initially focused on sand terrain, they developed a tracked model “for fun” and recently sold six units to …