Johannes Schewe
Co-founder and CEO. Historical press materials associate him with product vision and the modular Drive concept.
THE IDEA
Before electric skateboards became a crowded category of bolt-on kits and proprietary decks, a small team in Hamburg asked a different question: what if the motor lived inside the wheels, and what if that drive unit could attach to almost any longboard you already owned? That question became Mellow Boards — a company founded in 2015 by Johannes Schewe and Kilian Green, two engineers and riders who wanted urban mobility to feel like board sports rather than like riding a appliance on wheels.
The premise was modular from the start. Instead of selling a complete locked-down product, Mellow proposed the Mellow Drive — a self-contained rear truck assembly with dual in-wheel motors, battery, electronics, and wireless remote in one package. You mounted it on your deck. You charged it. You rode. When battery chemistry improved or when you wanted a different board feel, you swapped decks, not the entire powertrain. In a market obsessed with integrated designs, Mellow's approach was deliberately open.
Hamburg was not an accidental headquarters. Germany's engineering culture, proximity to suppliers, and a growing urban cycling and micromobility scene gave the founders access to talent and manufacturing partners who understood precision mechanics. Schewe and Green did not arrive with venture capital fanfare; they arrived with prototypes, spreadsheets, and a Kickstarter campaign that would test whether riders shared their vision of an endless ride — a phrase that became the company's public shorthand for range anxiety solved through regeneration, smart power modes, and a battery sized for real commutes rather than spec-sheet hero numbers.
What distinguished Mellow in conversation was restraint. Where competitors chased maximum speed headlines, Mellow published a 40 km/h ceiling and paired it with four distinct riding modes, IP65 weather sealing, and a 99 Wh battery chosen to stay within airline carry-on limits for many jurisdictions at the time. The product was opinionated: enough range for urban loops, enough torque for hills, enough modularity to survive the rapid iteration cycle of early e-skate technology.
Independent archive note: This website documents the historical Mellow Boards story from public sources. It is not operated by or endorsed by Mellow Boards GmbH or its subsequent owners unless independently verified.
THE DRIVE
At the centre of every Mellow product sat the Drive — a 3.9 kg assembly measuring roughly 366 × 174 × 59 mm that replaced conventional rear trucks. Two in-wheel motors eliminated belt drives and exposed gearboxes, lowering noise and maintenance while keeping the aesthetic clean. Power flowed from a compact 99 Wh lithium pack through motor controllers tuned for smooth acceleration rather than abrupt surges.
Regenerative braking recovered energy on deceleration, extending effective range beyond what a static 15 km rating might suggest on flat ground. Riders who understood terrain and mode selection could stretch a charge across a working day; riders who pinned the throttle in Pro mode learned quickly why Mellow offered Eco and Rookie profiles. The engineering trade-offs were honest: a smaller battery kept weight and airline compliance manageable; regeneration and mode discipline compensated.
Installation was designed for riders comfortable with skate tools — not for factory-only swaps. That choice expanded the addressable market to anyone who already owned a favourite deck, but it also demanded clear documentation and support. Mellow's early community forums and Kickstarter updates reflected that education burden: torque settings, wheel compatibility, and maintenance intervals were part of the product experience, not afterthoughts.
THE STORY
Mellow's public timeline moves from garage prototypes to one of European crowdfunding's notable hardware successes, then through a delayed but eventual product launch and a corporate acquisition that shifted control to an established German electronics group. Each phase left documentation — press coverage, campaign updates, specification sheets — that this archive collects and contextualises.
- 2015 — Founded in Hamburg. Johannes Schewe and Kilian Green establish Mellow Boards and develop early Drive prototypes.
- May–June 2015 — Kickstarter. Campaign raises €309,978 from 364 backers against a €100,000 goal. Read the crowdfunding story.
- 2016–2017 — Development & manufacturing ramp. Engineering refinements, supply-chain work, and pre-production units for backers and press.
- March 2017 — Launch. Mellow Drive ships to backers and enters wider sales channels documented at the time.
- November 2018 — TQ Systems acquisition. TQ-Group subsidiary TQ Systems acquires Mellow Boards, integrating the team and IP into a larger mobility and electronics portfolio.
For a month-by-month view with source categories, see the full historical timeline and the company history overview.
THE PEOPLE
Kilian Green
Co-founder and CTO. Historical press materials describe him as a former mechatronics specialist at BMW, responsible for engineering and drive systems.
Founder-led hardware startups carry the personality of their creators long after scale-up. Schewe and Green appeared in campaign videos, trade interviews, and demo rides across Europe, articulating a rider-first philosophy that resisted the temptation to over-promise range or under-engineer safety. After the TQ acquisition, individual public roles became harder to trace in open sources — another reason this archive treats post-2018 operational detail as historically documented rather than currently verified.
KICKSTARTER
Mellow's May–June 2015 Kickstarter campaign was a inflection point. Seeking €100,000, the project closed with €309,978 pledged by 364 backers — more than triple the goal. That result validated demand for a modular German-engineered drive at a time when most crowdfunded e-skates were monolithic boards from new brands with limited service infrastructure.
Campaign materials emphasised specifications that would remain surprisingly stable through launch: dual in-wheel drive, four modes, regenerative braking, IP65 rating, and a weight under four kilograms. Delivery timelines slipped — common for first-run hardware — but the specification sheet established trust with a technically literate backer base who read battery watt-hours and motor placement diagrams before reading marketing adjectives.
TECHNOLOGY
Mellow's engineering story spans mechanical, electrical, and firmware domains. The archive breaks these into readable chapters for riders and for historians of micromobility.
Mellow Drive
Modular rear assembly, mounting philosophy, and industrial design constraints.
In-Wheel Motors
Hub motor placement, torque delivery, and maintenance implications versus belt drives.
Battery System
99 Wh pack, range trade-offs, charging behaviour, and travel considerations.
Regenerative Braking
Energy recovery, rider technique, and interaction with riding modes.
Riding Modes
Rookie, Eco, Pro, and Endless — power profiles explained.
Technology Overview
Pillar page tying subsystems into a coherent whole with specification tables.
THE ARCHIVE
This site exists because scattered primary sources — campaign archives, press clips, specification PDFs, forum threads — deserve structured presentation. The archive section catalogues media types and research notes; the sources page documents methodology. We distinguish historical fact from uncertain present status throughout.
Whether you are restoring a Drive, writing about micromobility history, or comparing hub-motor architectures, start with the glossary and FAQ for terminology and common questions. Product-specific pages cover the Mellow Drive, Mellow Cruiser, and Mellow Surfer complete-board offerings built with Buddybuddy deck partnerships.
The archive grows as new primary sources surface in public web captures; if you maintain period manuals or press material, consult our methodology page for how contributions may be evaluated in future revisions.