DRIVING INNOVATION IN THE WORLD OF EVS WITH "SHANE"
Shane Chen, the inventor of the original self-balancing hoverboard, has unveiled SHANE: a parallel two-wheeled electric car concept that applies the same physics principles as the Hoverboard to create a fully stable, road-legal personal vehicle. Developed by his company Inventist, SHANE challenges every assumption about what an electric car needs to look like.
Who Is Shane Chen?
Shane Chen moved to the United States in 1986 and has since become one of the most prolific independent inventors in personal transportation. He holds 76 patents, including the Hoverboard, Solowheel, Orbitwheels, Powerwing, and Aquaskipper. His original self-balancing hoverboard is now featured in a permanent exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His inventions have won awards at CES, INPEX, ISPO, and The History Channel, and one of his scientific instruments has been used by NASA aboard the International Space Station.
What Is SHANE?
SHANE is a first-of-its-kind parallel two-wheeled electric car concept designed for practical everyday urban and highway use. Unlike motorcycle-style two-wheelers or narrow EVs, SHANE places its two large wheels side-by-side, creating a vehicle footprint similar to a narrow city car. The wheels automatically adjust as the vehicle moves, shifting the centre of gravity to keep the car balanced. As Chen describes it: you control the speed of each wheel, just like the Hoverboard, and physics keeps you upright.
How the SHANE Balancing System Works
SHANE uses a two-wheel differential speed control system to achieve stability. The large wheels minimise rolling resistance at speed, while in-wheel regenerative shock absorbers recover damping energy to recharge the battery during driving. This system makes SHANE as stable and safe as a four-wheeled vehicle under normal driving conditions, while promising extremely easy parking given the vehicle's narrow twin-wheel footprint. The approach extrapolates directly from the engineering principles Chen developed for the Hoverboard.
Shane Chen's Impact on Personal Mobility
Chen's body of work represents a consistent philosophy: find inefficiencies in how humans move, then invent something that solves them elegantly. From the Solowheel electric unicycle to the Aquaskipper water-powered hydrofoil, his inventions consistently challenge category conventions. SHANE applies that same approach to the EV space, where most manufacturers are simply electrifying conventional four-wheeled formats. Whether SHANE proceeds to production remains to be announced by Inventist, but as a concept it demonstrates a genuinely alternative vision for urban electric mobility.
Discover more pioneering electric mobility designs at TheArsenale's electric scooter collection, or explore individual standouts like the Scrooser Electric Scooter Prime and the ZOOZ Urban Ultralight electric bike. For the full story on SHANE, see coverage from Electrek and analysis from IEEE Spectrum.
Photo: INVENTIST
