Andreas from e-surfer magazine

I always liked to create websites around my favourite sports. The first website was wakeboarding.de in 1996. I also run jetski.de and some others in the past.

I was following the petrol powered boards for a while, but never made the step to buy one. I ride electric skateboards since about 10 years and started E-Boarder.com. at the same time I started E-Surfer.com as I found these trends very interesting.

In the meanwhile my focus has shifted very much from E-Boarder to E-Surfer. I am just a water-sport guy.

Well, I guess 6 months ago we all thought 2018 will be the year of electric surfboards with many new boards (and E-Foils)  being available for purchase. I guess we all hoped this still in January 2018.

Now it looks more like 2019 as most manufacturers face delays or can only ship very small volumes.

I hope (or better wish) that at least 10 different electric surfboards and 5 electric hydrofoils will be available for purchase with a delivery date within 4 weeks or less  in 2019.

I think building a reliable electric surfboard is not easy. Many manufacturers are afraid of returns. Some say if your have 5% of returns than your business is making a loss.

In addition it is not easy to get batteries. I think the automotive industry is buying most of the stock and they are buying huge quantities, so that electric surfboard companies cannot compete.

I agree. The prices should be in the range of 2k-4k to reach the mainstream. I think this will still take a few years.

The Northern European countries have only a short summer, so they have plenty of time in the year to sit in front of their computers or in the lab. They also have very good engineers.

And yes, they have a lack of waves and are looking for ways around it.

As much as I like my Jeep Wrangler I needed a van to store and lock the surfboards. The van will also help me to go e-surfing in less than ideal weather conditions as I can change my cloth and warm up in the van.

The electric skateboards have at least a 5 to 7 years head start. They are around since about 2007. They also need much less battery power, don’t need to be waterproof and are for these reasons much cheaper. About 400 to 2.000 EUR.

The electric surfboards just need some time, but I believe they will come.

Difficult question, but I would guess in 3 to 5 years. However, I think the adoption will start earlier as people like environment friendly and less noisy toys and will pay more for it.

I am happy that my job brings me all around the world and if I have a free day I try to to connect with E-Surfers and E-Boarders in order to meet and ride.

In terms of work life balance I have the advantage that I am working from an home office if I am not travelling. I have late night calls, but at the same time I can go out for a ride at noon.

Social Media is great for easy interaction, but it is very unstructured. The same questions got asked again and again.

Blog articles are structured and easy to find, but not very interactive.

A forum is a very good tool to educate each other. And since everybody  can participate each claim from a manufacturers will be proved (or unproved) very soon.

This is what I like about forums.

If you think about that in general 90+ % of forum  visitors are only viewing and not writing and how small the community still is, I find it impressive how the E-Surfer forum has developed in such a short time.

Especially the fact that almost every manufacturer has an account and is answering questions.

I want to thank everybody who is participating in the forum and especially you, Mike. You are one of the top 3 most active users, if not the most active one.