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I’ve been trying to ride this electric hydrofoil board for over an hour now, and have been bleeding for nearly half that time. The open wounds are on my hand, inflicted after the electric jet propulsion motor shot me and the eFoil board up and out of the water, and we splashed back down in a jumble of wet limbs, metal, and carbon fiber.
I don’t know what part of the board hit me this time. It’s hard to keep track of which fall has whacked which body part. I float for a moment, panting, hand bleeding, toes, knees, and elbows bruised. Then all I want to do is pull myself back up on the board again.
The appeal of an eFoil is probably obvious: It’s a small, self-contained watercraft similar to a short surfboard, but with an electric hydrofoil underneath that propels you at up to 30 mph. The motor is mounted on a mast below the water and has fins attached to its sides. When that motor engages, the board pops up out of the water, gliding a foot or so above the surface for a smooth ride that feels like flying. Efoils surged into prominence a few years ago, when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg became the unfortunate pasty face of the product after he was photographed riding one. Now the industry is growing, and companies are offering more ways to let you soar over the water than ever.
Flite is an Australian company with several eFoil models in its lineup priced between $7,000 and $17,500. Flite wants to make these flying surfboards more accessible to beginners, which is where its $12,995 Flitescooter comes in. This beginner-oriented model was introduced at CES in January 2023. Flite has positioned it as an easy-to-learn device that’s ideal for resorts, yacht goers, and families.
Flite wants you to think of the Flitescooter as a kind of Segway of the sea—an easily mounted surf-skimming device that will appeal to beginners and water-sport mavericks alike. It’s meant to be a fun, chill time, but in my experience, the Flitescooter is not exactly smooth sailing. In fact, the Flitescooter smoothly tumbled me into the water repeatedly as I struggled to get used to riding it.
The Flitescooter’s inflatable platform has a carbon-fiber core, a design which aids both buoyancy and portability. The foils, stem, and board can all be disassembled to make transit simpler. A removable handle that resembles the handlebar of an electric kick scooter ostensibly makes it simpler to control, though I found that the handle didn’t always make things easier. (More on that in a moment.) Inflated and assembled, the Flitescooter weighs 61.7 pounds by itself. Flite offers three battery sizes, which come in 13-, 24-, and 32-pound options. So it’s more transportable than a jet ski, but harder to lug around than a surfboard.
The rectangular batteries are swappable; they snap into the board’s core just beneath your feet. Flite says the battery for the hydrofoil lasts around an hour and a half before needing a recharge. I rode it for nearly that long, and the battery got down below 20 percent, so the company’s estimate feels right.
Flite’s foilboards have a variety of propulsion options, from spinning propellers to jet engines. Flite’s latest foray into its motor tech is the AMP Jet, which is built directly into a newly designed board. That model is sadly not available for testing yet. The Flitescooter, one of several Flite models you can already buy and the one I rode, only comes with Flite’s existing jet motor. The jet engine on the Flitescooter is fully encased, so there’s no danger of losing any digits to a spinning propeller. That said, the fins on the sides of the hydrofoil are sharp and wide, so it takes some mindfulness to avoid kicking them when splashing around—or falling. Which you’ll be doing a lot.
I'll pause here to offer the teensiest of credentials. I've wakeboarded, surfed, snowboarded, and lounged around on paddle boards. I'm by no means a watersports expert, but I'm at least decent at keeping my balance on these kinds of fancy rafts. Despite that, whatever kraken had apparently chosen to possess my Flitescooter clearly wanted to keep me down in the deep.
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During my 80-ish-minute session on the Flitescooter, I only once managed to stay up more than 30 seconds after it got up to speed. It’s a glorious feeling once you get the hang of it, and every time I fell I wanted to climb back aboard and give it another shot.
Humping the Pole
Another obstacle, counterintuitive though it may seem, is the control pole. Toward the front center of the board is a slot where you can fasten the aforementioned pole with a set of handlebars. Attaching it evokes the feel of an old-school stand-up jet ski, though without many of the benefits. The handlebars have a throttle on them, but the bars can’t really be used to steer the craft. Also, the pole doesn't move to meet you at all; instead it remains inflexible at an angle that points slightly toward the nose of the board. You’re supposed to hold the handlebars for stability, but that puts you in a weird position where you have to lean over the pole when getting up to gliding speed. It’s also tricky to figure out where to place your feet. Using a traditional board stance like you would on a surfboard or skateboard forces you to twist your body to grasp the handle properly. When I faced straight forward like Flite shows people doing in its marketing images, the board felt wobbly and unbalanced, and I was very quickly thrown off.
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I had a guide from a local eFoil shop show me how to ride the Flitescooter. I asked him what the ideal position was, and he said, “You basically want to be humping the pole.” If I didn’t stand right up against the pole when revving the throttle, the motor would push the nose of the board straight up out of the water, tipping me over backwards. You’re supposed to step back once the board gets out of the water, which I had trouble with but I’m sure gets easier with practice.
You can imagine how having a big immovable stick between your legs could go wrong in a crash. Standing right over the handle makes it feel close enough to either smash into your teeth or whack you right in the nether regions if you fall off wrong. Neither of those things happened to me in the time I used the Flitescooter, but on at least two of my falls, something on the handle caught my hand and scooped out a chunk of flesh before tossing me into the sea.
Luckily, the stem is detachable, so you can use the scooter as a more standard eFoil if the handle feels like too much. When you go barless, you control the speed using a remote handheld throttle.
Plenty of Other Boards in the Sea
“It's like riding a bike,” says Nathan Laney, a sales adviser for Flite. “Once you get it, you'll never fall off.”
I believe him. Given more time and perhaps some enhanced athletic acumen, I'm sure I would have gotten the hang of eFoiling. Like any sport, there's a learning curve. But even taking this into account, I struggle to picture who the Flitescooter is for, exactly. It occupies a strange middle ground between the maneuverability of a surfboard and the chaotic euphoria of a stand-up jet ski.
If the Scooter was as easy to ride as a Segway, you can imagine vacation resorts and beachside tourist traps bustling with them. Anyone so inclined (and funded) to buy one for personal use would likely have the patience and motivation to learn it well enough. But then it's not clear why they'd choose the more limited, clunky, and expensive Flitescooter over a more robust eFoil that costs a little less. Especially when Flite itself offers a variety of similar devices for less money, sans the potential risk of being impaled by those handlebars.
There’s clearly potential for the Flitescooter to be a great time; it’s just less forgiving than something aimed at beginners should be.
That said, when you can catch the water just right, with your balance stable, the chaff of the waves falls away beneath you to yield a smooth, buttery ride. It is glorious—at least until a moment later when one slight miscalculation sinks the bow and hurls you into the waves.
