[HN Gopher] A $1k Wheelchair
___________________________________________________________________
A $1k Wheelchair
Author : bo0tzz
Score : 922 points
Date : 2024-10-01 17:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newmobility.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newmobility.com)
| tocs3 wrote:
| It would be nice to see a little more of this in the world. Thank
| you Cambry and Zack Nelson.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I just checked online and wheelchairs here (Canada) can be had
| for about US $500. What am I missing in this $1K "affordable"
| wheelchair idea?
| flyrain wrote:
| Most of them are under $200 in Amazon
| skylurk wrote:
| Would you buy an under-$200 bike off of Amazon? Especially
| one you spent all day on?
| tredre3 wrote:
| I don't know about Amazon, but $200 is the price of a
| reasonable entry-level bike in any large surface store so
| yes?
|
| I know this is HN and people will likely look down on
| anyone riding a <$2000 bike, but come on.
| pjdesno wrote:
| I ride a lot, and am happy to ride cheap bikes, but I
| probably wouldn't ride a $200 Amazon or Walmart bike for
| rides longer than 30-40 miles without swapping the
| saddle, which would add anywhere from $40 to $150.
| ajford wrote:
| The question was would you spend that on a device you
| spend 8+hrs in each day, which is something people often
| ignore.
|
| This is a device you _live_ in. This is someone's
| mobility and independence you're talking about. Not a "I
| spend 30 minutes to an hour a day riding", or a "I
| commute to work on this" but instead "I use this to enjoy
| life".
| kelnos wrote:
| Most people don't ride their bike every single day,
| sometimes for 8-12 hours per day.
|
| If you did, you probably wouldn't be particularly happy
| with a $200 bike.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| $200 is a reasonable price for a bicycle-shaped garage
| decoration which gets ridden for 30 minutes per month,
| which is indeed all that many people want out of a
| bicycle. Something practical for a 15 minute one-way
| commute that you ride every day is more like $500 new.
| Something which you could spend all day every day on
| would be a _lot_ more.
| ekidd wrote:
| When our kids were growing quickly, we went through a
| number of sub-$300 bikes, both new and gifted by family.
| I ended up doing about one repair every two weeks,
| including broken derailleurs, junky brakes, jammed
| wheels, you name it. And our kids did not abuse those
| bikes.
|
| I ended up buying a bike stand and a basic toolkit just
| so I could fix those bikes quickly and get the kids back
| outside. The parts on those bikes were absolute garbage
| and the reliability was zero.
|
| Meanwhile I have a medium/high-end mountain bike from
| 1997 that still has some original parts on it, despite
| having seen time as a daily commuter and a trail bike.
|
| A good thing to look at is resale value. Around here, you
| can resell a $1200 mountain bike for a good price. But
| you'd lucky to get much for a $800 bike.
| sgt wrote:
| Most bicycles these days are in the $6-7k range easily. I
| mean you can cycle with a cheap-o but what about your
| wheels, your lack of suspension? Your brakes? The feeling
| of a premium amazing handling MTB is something else.
| toast0 wrote:
| No, there are much better under-$200 bikes on craigslist.
| :P Get a nice $100 bike from the early 80s and pay a bike
| store for a tuneup, and you've got a pretty useful bike to
| ride on all day; gotta friction shift though. Not a lot of
| great looking wheelchairs on craigslist near me though.
| rtkwe wrote:
| There are many different classes of wheelchair. Most of the
| really cheap versions are medical chairs for people who can't
| move on their own for whatever reason, think the kind you see
| at hospitals or nursing homes for wheeling people around.
| This type is for people who can't walk but can still sit
| upright on their own and can move the wheelchair on their
| own. They're lighter, rigid and have higher efficiency than
| the medical type. They're also semi custom or adjustable to
| fit the user better than the temp/medical kind.
| badjoak wrote:
| Smart phone under $200, would you want one?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Go to someone who doesn't know anything about smartphones
| and he'll say sure hit me up.
|
| That's me, I know nothing about wheelchairs, hence why I'm
| asking.
| jrexilius wrote:
| Insurance approved I think is the key differentiator.
| notatoad wrote:
| the article isn't super clear, but it didn't sound like the
| goal for the $1000 wheelchair was for it to be insurance
| approved.
| bluGill wrote:
| Insurance only pays for one chair every 8 years (IIRC, my
| aunt who was in a wheelchair died a few years back and so
| now I no longer have family conversations about these
| details). The ability to get custom chairs for different
| purposes would be nice. My aunt had an off road wheelchair
| for using around the yard, back when she could walk around
| the house (with a cane), but the doctor warned her she
| would be full time in a wheelchair around the house before
| the next time insurance would buy her one. So if you can
| get the expensive wheel chair for around the yard and
| afford to buy without insurance a second better suited for
| around the house that would be useful.
| hinkley wrote:
| In the middle of the article they say that an insurance-
| approved wheelchair will tend to cost the patient $1000
| after insurance. They're aiming for private purchase at the
| same price.
| bee_rider wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > When I first heard about this, it sounded awesome and a bit
| far-fetched. It's hard to find a pair of quality wheelchair
| wheels for less than $500. Same with a rigid backrest. How were
| they going to offer both, plus a custom wheelchair frame
| without compromising on quality?
|
| I have no idea though. Maybe there are sort of like...
| different classes of wheelchair, and they are trying to make
| not-terrible one? Like technically $5 headphones exist but not
| from a hobbyist point of view.
| sethrd_ wrote:
| Are you looking at "hospital" style wheelchairs, or dedicated
| use wheelchairs? The difference is huge. Those hospital style,
| one size fits all chairs are HEAVY, clunky, slow, and tire you
| out very easily if you don't have someone pushing you. Someone
| with a spinal cord injury or a variety of mobility constrants
| would be better off in a dedicated chair like this as they are
| lighter (sub 20lbs), designed to fit to the user, and offer
| more comfort which combats things like skin wounds.
|
| If you look at wheelchairs from companies like TiLite or
| Quickie, you are starting off at almost double this price
| before any customization (rims, guards, etc). $1000 all in for
| a dedicated wheelchair is fantastic.
| hinkley wrote:
| The weight of a bike or a wheelchair matters a lot less when
| you're at low speeds on level terrain without many turns,
| which describes a hospital to a T - they have to be able to
| get gurneys through these spaces, and if you think a
| wheelchair is heavy then brother have I got news for you.
|
| But the moment you go outside now you're dealing with ramps
| and hills.
| 91bananas wrote:
| I'm 38, more fit than most, I had to interact with my
| father-in-law's wheelchair this weekend for the first time.
| He is 73 and expected to travel with it everywhere, lifting
| it in and out of some kind of a vehicle. I would _very_
| much describe it as heavy, especially in the context of a
| 70+ (maybe 60+, maybe 50+) year old individual. I'm
| wondering what the news is.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| $500 buys you a decent enough but hardly "happy to live with"
| indoor chair. Not the kind of chair that you go shopping in.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > What am I missing in this $1K "affordable" wheelchair idea?
|
| Truckloads of paperwork, at least in the EU. Wheelchairs are
| regulated as "medical devices" since 2017, which does make
| sense given that people tend to spend a large portion of their
| day sitting in them and that they tend to be on the upper end
| of the body weight distribution... but the certifications make
| them much more expensive than they'd need to be, and they also
| prevent competition from entering the market.
|
| Additionally, laws of scale apply here as well. Wheelchairs are
| a pretty bespoke, small scale industry - outside of large
| orders from civil protection agencies to be used in mass
| evacuation scenarios (the German THW and Red Cross for example
| have stockpiles, mostly used in foreign aid/crisis response and
| WW2-era bomb evacuations), every user has their own specific
| needs, making mass production all but infeasible.
| fencepost wrote:
| You can get perfectly viable inexpensive bicycles as well - but
| if you were expecting to replace ALL of your other vehicle
| transport with a bike would you start by looking at ones with
| welded steel frames? The classic 80s Schwinn 10-speed that
| weighs in at 40 pounds but is pretty indestructible?
|
| That's a $500 wheelchair.
| jrexilius wrote:
| This pretty much embodies why I love hacker engineering. Solving
| hard problems by itself is fun, making peoples lives better in
| the process makes it really worthwhile.
| SirFatty wrote:
| before clicking the link, I thought it would be something along
| the lines of a Dean Kamen iBOT chair. Seems like a lot of money
| for a basic wheelchair.
| edm0nd wrote:
| These aren't basic wheelchairs like at the hospital imo. They
| are the wheelchairs that someone is going to spend their entire
| day/life in and use for mobility. Huge difference I think. It's
| also heavily customizable
| https://notawheelchair.com/pages/configurator
| m463 wrote:
| hmm... looks like the ibot is available? $25-30k
|
| https://newmobility.com/the-ibot-is-back/
|
| also I looked and a walmart wheelchair is $149. Wonder why it
| sucks.
| kkfx wrote:
| Ehm... Seeing the product... A right price could be more 300$,
| and only because not made in China, than 1000... If mass produced
| could be more 150$...
| sethrd_ wrote:
| You should do some research into wheelchairs and the
| differences in designs, materials, and life times to better
| understand why the $1000 price tag on what the company is
| offering is actually incredible. This is for someone who has a
| spinal cord injury and has to be in a chair fulltime, not those
| hospital style chairs you are probably thinking of.
| kkfx wrote:
| Well, materials seems to be very common, and indeed even if
| they are precious alloys to be lighter it's still a very high
| price. Research have to be payed of course, but again you can
| sell a product, no more than that.
|
| I've heard many time about "special design", "this price is
| really right" and so on, all the time it was wrong. Oh, that
| does not means it's a bad product, it's simply overpriced and
| the price might even be right seen their expenses and
| resources, but it's still too much for a market who offer
| other very similar product at a much little price.
|
| An idea alone does not suffice.
| sethrd_ wrote:
| I've mentioned in other comments the difference between
| "hospital" style wheelchairs and full time use wheelchairs
| used by people with spinal cord injuries or other mobility
| issues. Full time wheelchairs are 1/3 or more lighter than
| the hospital style, more rigid which makes pushing more
| efficient, more comfortable, and easier to maneuver.
|
| You cannot compare these wheelchairs to what you might sit
| in at the emergency room, as they are for different use
| cases and fill different needs. These wheelchairs aren't
| for "oh I broke my leg and have to use a wheelcahir for a
| few months". These are for "I will be spending 14+ hours a
| day in this chair."
|
| Please do some research about rigid frame wheelchairs
| before saying you don't see how this is a big deal.
| Companies like TiLite and Quickie START at almost double
| this price point for similar products.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Amazing that a group of people who are generally the type
| to be sitting on $3000 ergonomic office chairs are
| insisting that $50 wheelchairs ought to be enough for
| anyone.
| kkfx wrote:
| Well, I'm skeptic as I'm skeptic about 3k$ office chairs.
| Skeptic about the price, because well, research does have
| a price, but once you have profited to cover research
| fees you can't keep selling a not-anymore-new stuff at
| the same "pioneering phase" price.
|
| That's the reason why Xerox have failed, IBM and
| Microsoft succeed, GNU/Linux succeed over other unices
| and so on. It's the same reasons why our EVs who are
| indeed a bit superior over Chinese ones can't succeed
| give a mean 4x price tags and their OEMs end-up with
| lobbying for stellar custom duty and alike to stop them.
|
| Sure, design a light and rigid chair demand a significant
| research effort, but in the end you give a simple
| product, you can't count on warm welcome at certain
| prices. Like designed a road bicycle, it's expensive, you
| have used complex materials etc, but you can't count on
| big sales if you push your profit too high.
|
| Currently in the west ALL the few who still produce
| something have climbed the prices claiming inflation so
| much that they are no more interesting, competitive
| respect of China. It's a lesson too many do not want to
| accept.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Even Walmart doesn't sell bikes for less than like $200
| and everyone agrees that they're pretty awful. $1000 for
| a bike that's essentially custom to your measurements
| (which is the whole point of these chairs!) and assembled
| in the US doesn't seem like a ripoff at all.
| fotta wrote:
| Custom fit lightweight wheelchairs are expensive. My Ti-Lite (one
| of the most popular lightweight chair brands) Aero Z starts at
| $3k and goes up quickly with wheels and backrest and casters and
| various other options that I need for sitting 16 hours a day
| without creating more problems. Insurance covers this for me
| every 5 years, but of course that's not a luxury every one has.
| Most plans don't cover DME 100%.
|
| What Zack and Cambry are doing is great.
|
| (edit) I'd like to add that I think part of being able to drive
| costs down is that they're not offering these via insurance so
| they sidestep the need for FDA approval to market it as a medical
| device (hence the company name), CMS approval and HCPCS coding
| and all the regulatory costs that come with that.
|
| Now don't get me started on power wheelchair cost...
| gibrown wrote:
| Ya, I was expecting to see something not very impressive at
| that link, but was pleasantly surprised. My chair is about $7k
| and while this one doesn't look like it would work for me, it
| is definitely much better than the cheap hospital chairs.
| max-ibel wrote:
| Are the hospital chairs cheap? Genuinely asking...
| roywiggins wrote:
| Amazon appears to offer such chairs for like $200? They're
| probably crap though.
| svpk wrote:
| If you don't mind sharing, what aspects of it make it seem
| like it wouldn't work for you?
| Narhem wrote:
| Anything medical becomes a licensing nightmare. With how
| expensive power wheelchairs get I'm shocked they don't come
| with a flight box.
| humbleferret wrote:
| I was curious so looked at a few power wheelchairs...It's wild
| how expensive they are, especially considering the advancements
| in electric mobility tech elsewhere. You'd think they'd share
| some components with e-scooters, e-bikes, or even electric cars
| - motors, batteries, controllers.
|
| Are the powertrains and control systems in power wheelchairs
| really that specialised? Or is it another case of the medical
| device markup and regulatory hurdles driving up costs?
| amiga wrote:
| I'm a guy who has disassembled and reverse engineered a
| standard Jazzy power chair, and what I noticed was the
| attention to detail regarding failures. The chair is
| thoroughly designed to shut down at the slightest bit of
| trouble. There's some redundancy in things like the
| controller, where it used redundant hall effect sensors that
| were identical to the others, but ran in an inverted power
| profile, to detect any weirdness in the sensor outputs.
|
| I ended up adding a long range remote control to it. A remote
| control power chair is fun to drive around. People do get a
| little concerned when they see a chair rolling around without
| a driver
| orlehuxwell wrote:
| My mum recently had a curbside crash while she was riding
| an e-bike. This resulted in her breaking bones in both her
| hands, which resulted in a surgery in her left hand and
| various problems (tcl fracture related) with her right
| hand.
|
| This makes me actually appreciate reliability in e-vehicles
| motor cutoffs etc. I keep thinking if this could have been
| avoided with a better quality e-bike or if actually it
| would be even worst with a cheaper one.
|
| Which makes one think, how often a wheelchair with cheap
| e-scooter parts would crash people into staris, cars etc
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I know public use devices have their own problems with
| reliability, but I did almost cause a traffic accident a
| couple times over the years. Every time, the scooter's
| accelerator lever got "sticky" due to repetitive
| (mis)use, and would sometimes not go all the way to 0
| when released. Stuck at ~10%, the scooter would brake
| normally and remain at halt under my weight, but the
| moment I stepped off it, it would suddenly launch itself
| at the cross traffic.
|
| It's these little things that get you. The scooters all
| have some kind of debounce logic, disabling the
| accelerator until you're moving sufficiently fast - but
| the logic doesn't kick in when you stop without releasing
| the lever. A little bit of redundancy would've helped
| here.
| _flux wrote:
| A friend has an e-unicycle (I think the category devices
| has some other name as well..) and he wanted to try out
| how it behaves in a track.
|
| He sort of knew, but didn't expect it, that when the roll
| of the device exceeds a certain threshold, the device
| will shutdown. Even if you're on a curve going with some
| speed. Broke his wrist. Since then he's also wearing
| wrist protectors that keep the hand straight.
|
| Actually it was a bit unexpected that it would have known
| to do that; it must have used its complete IMU data to
| even know it was rolled, as plain accelerometer would
| have been pointing "down" as usual.
| snatchpiesinger wrote:
| > Actually it was a bit unexpected that it would have
| known to do that; it must have used its complete IMU data
| to even know it was rolled, as plain accelerometer would
| have been pointing "down" as usual.
|
| That actually feels like overengineering based on well-
| intentioned, but wrong specs. You probably want to just
| use sideways acceleration for "falling over" detection,
| instead of roll.
| leoedin wrote:
| I'm an embedded software engineer with past experience
| developing robotics and motor control drivers.
|
| Those e-unicycles _terrify me_. No way I 'd trust my life
| to one. Once you're at speed, every failure mode results
| in instant passenger ejection. I see people flying
| through traffic on those things - they're just one sensor
| glitch or integer overflow away from serious injury.
| tim333 wrote:
| The safety with ebikes does vary a bit although I'm not
| sure it's down to price. My one is quite a cheap one but
| has quite a lot of safety features - will only go if you
| pedal it, motor cut if you touch the breaks, 14 mph speed
| limiter etc. But I guess you can come off any two wheeled
| vehicle.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > People do get a little concerned when they see a chair
| rolling around without a driver
|
| Add a hat and a scarf on a wire and you've got a Halloween
| prop.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Assistive technology costs are high because consumers barely
| have an alternative. I am blind. In Europe, a 40-cell braille
| display starts a 6k. 6k, just for a monitor which displays
| _40 characters_. Prices are largely unchanged since 20 years.
| Technological advancements are irrelevant. Resellers will
| squeeze the cow, thats plain capitalism man.
| mistercheph wrote:
| Just from googling -- an orbit reader 40-cell appears to
| cost $1,700 USD, is there a reason this doesn't actually
| solve the same problem as the 6,000 euro display, or are
| these not available in your market for that cost? Sorry if
| my question is off the mark, I don't know a lot about this
| and your comment piqued my curiosity.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Orbit reader is the most low-quality device you can find
| on the market. This is like suggesting a bicycle to
| someone complaining about car prices.
| krisoft wrote:
| I'm sure the commenter meant well. You said "In Europe, a
| 40-cell braille display starts a 6k." Which to me means
| that the most low quality, cheapest device starts at 6k.
|
| Now i learn from you that that low quality device is so
| bad that you consider it a separate product class in
| itself. Can you tell us more what does it lack? In other
| words what features are you looking for when you are
| looking for a 40-cell brail display? (What is the minimum
| quality for it to be a "car" in your analogy?)
| K0balt wrote:
| This is a fascinating potential wedge for an open-source
| initiative. Could you please elaborate as to what makes a
| device highly usable and of good quality, vs cheap and
| unpleasant to use?
|
| I've long thought that open source would make a lot of
| sense for assistive devices, and that it has the
| potential to change incentives within the cartel of
| assistive device manufacturing.
| ebalit wrote:
| There was a HackadayPrize 2023 competitor that worked on
| this [0]. He had to rethink the way those devices are
| built to bring the cost down.
|
| That would be interesting to know if his solution could
| match the 4k$ in term of usability or if there is some
| issue like refreshing rate that make the piezo based
| system necessary for a good user experience.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXi1tG78AW4
| mistercheph wrote:
| This is specifically like someone that has never seen or
| used a car or bicycle asking about why a bicycle wouldn't
| work for someone complaining about car prices, which I
| think is a pretty reasonable question!
| pbasista wrote:
| If that is the case, then there seems to be a place in the
| market for someone else who can sell these devices for
| cheaper.
|
| However, as you have pointed out, since it is also a market
| where people have few choices, there is no incentive for
| any new player to significantly lower the prices. Even if
| they easily could. Because they know that they will get the
| customers anyway.
|
| That seems to be the root cause of the excessive price
| problem. An existing oligopoly of rent-seeking companies.
| Or a cartel, if you like.
|
| I think that one of the ways to disturb this market and
| bring the prices down is for some honest company to join it
| and price their products fairly.
|
| Once there is one such company, I assume that everyone else
| will lower their prices as well. Because otherwise they
| will run out of business.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is if you spend 100 million dollars to make
| one (which is about 30 engineers, 50 testers, and 20
| other for a year) and sell 10,000 units (remember there
| is competition who will get come sales) you need $1000
| each just to pay engineering costs. Lack of scale is what
| makes many products expensive.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I suspect a major difference is that those e-scooters, bikes,
| cars, etc are produced and sold by the millions, whereas
| wheelchairs are small volume by comparison. Another commenter
| mentioned the legal requirements, which complicates things.
|
| That said, a quick google says there's 65-132 million
| wheelchair users worldwide so it's not a small market either.
| space_oddity wrote:
| ...but the production and distribution of wheelchairs
| nothercastle wrote:
| Most of them are probably in countries where 1000 is a
| years wages.
| tim333 wrote:
| It's impressive and a little sad how cheap you can get them
| second hand.
| space_oddity wrote:
| I think a significant portion of the cost is related to the
| "medical device" label.
| tomcam wrote:
| Hey, would you get started on power wheelchair costs? Inquiring
| minds would like to learn more.
| sizzle wrote:
| What do you recommend for my parent, they are using a crappy
| Medicare approved Medline wheelchair that's like $300 on
| Amazon. They can't use their right side of their body really
| due to a stroke paralysis.
|
| The wheelchair is like starting to fall apart. What should I I
| get them that will last many years? Thanks!
| fotta wrote:
| You should really have an ATP evaluate them to determine what
| they need. Hemiparesis and a bad fitting chair is no joke.
| Unfortunately this is likely to be expensive (as noted in
| this entire post). You can try getting a lightweight chair
| like a TiLite or Quickie online, but the fitting and sizing
| is the most important part and in my experience a trained
| professional is the best route your first time around. After
| that, as you become more familiar with the needs of your
| parent you can make adjustments in the future.
| zeroq wrote:
| I'm a big fan of his channel, but when I saw the price tag, it
| got me thinking for a moment. Wheelchairs are a great example
| of why niche products are expensive.
|
| I think you're spot on with certifications.
|
| I was stupid a few times and needed orthopedic equipment. Each
| time, the price flabbergasted me. But it didn't matter since
| the health insurance fully refunded it.
|
| In a regulated market, if you can influence the cap, the item
| will cost exactly that, no less. And if the market is small
| enough to not allow any disruption, then it will stay that way
| forever.
|
| I need to talk to my girlfriend who's a physiotherapist about
| it. But for now I'm hoping his YouTube fame would start a
| snowball effect.
|
| Thinking he could do with the wheelchairs what Elon is
| pretending to do with EVs is truly exciting.
| devjab wrote:
| It's not that small of a market if you consider how many
| wheelchairs the European public sector buys. Take your
| average Danish hospital and they'll have at least 10
| wheelchairs placed at every major entrance. They're basically
| like shopping carts in a lot of public healthcare places.
| These are semi-regularity replaced because of wear and tear.
| If you could supply them with a cheap, solid be easily
| repairable version you could disrupt that market.
|
| Of course you're not going to have a very easy time entering
| the market. But even though they buy these things on
| regulated supply deals, they're not cheap. If you could get a
| certified electric one on top of a (I'm not sure if it's
| called regular), then you would be posed for disrupting the
| market.
| urban_winter wrote:
| $1000 is not cheap for an off the shelf wheelchair such as
| hospitals make available for patients (in the UK, at
| least). That was my first thought on reading the article -
| "$1000 for a wheelchair, really?" - and a quick Google
| shows that you can buy what looks like reasonable quality
| wheelchairs for less than that. But the ones on the article
| are custom-made for each buyer, which is clearly a vastly
| more expensive option.
|
| But, to the point, hospitals don't buy custom wheelchairs.
| seb1204 wrote:
| What about serviceability and spare/replacement parts?
|
| I guy selling mobility scooters told me that most
| customers never service theirs as it is easier to get the
| health insurance to pay for a new one every x years. This
| results in a very limited second hand market.
| zeroq wrote:
| It doesn't work like this.
|
| Take aircrafts or (to some degree) a racing car. You need
| a screw. Sure you can get one at your local hardware shop
| for a penny, but for regulated market you need one with
| certification and that will cost you something close to
| $10. I know it's crazy but that's how it works.
| cbzoiav wrote:
| Difference being it doesn't fail and if it does you know
| exactly how it was made and under which process. There
| will be an investigation to see what went wrong - was it
| the screws fault or was more force placed on it than it
| was certified for.
|
| Vs the one from the hardware store could have come from
| Alibaba and be a plastic core with a thin coating of
| metal for all you know.
| srockets wrote:
| No, you can't buy a reasonable quality wheelchair for
| less. You can buy what a person who doesn't need a
| wheelchair consider reasonable. If you had to use those
| cheap chairs for 16 hours a day, and pushing yourself
| even just for a mile of well paved roads, not even
| uphill, you would never consider those reasonable.
| f1shy wrote:
| This is absolutely the point. You have to live sitting in
| there. That must be more comfortable than the best thing
| in your house. No way you can do it for less than 1k.
| srockets wrote:
| Not just sitting, pushing yourself. Making a comfy chair
| is one thing, making one that you can also be mobile in,
| much harder.
| cbzoiav wrote:
| Except the wheelchairs used in hospitals are to push
| patients short distances across hard flat floors.
| srockets wrote:
| The OP isn't about hospital wheelchairs, but daily use
| wheelchairs. It's just most of the commenters here
| showing ignorance or ableism by suggesting the two are
| equivalent.
| cbzoiav wrote:
| I'm not saying otherwise - my comment reaffirms this.
| There are two separate things going on here -
|
| - You can buy a reasonable wheelchair for moving people
| relatively short distances across flat surfaces for less
| than $1000. E.g those used in hospitals and for the
| partially mobile.
|
| - You cannot currently buy a reasonable self propelled
| wheelchair for full time use for less than $1000 (give or
| take the manufacturer in the article).
| fotta wrote:
| I think it works in this case because Zack has a high profile
| YouTube channel and a high degree of trust in his workmanship
| from that. As they say, regulations are written in blood, and
| I would trust an approved device over a chair from some no
| name company somewhere because I have more faith that it
| won't break on me while I'm out and about. Zack is obviously
| an exception to that because of his reputation which I think
| will help him be successful in this endeavor.
| bradley13 wrote:
| A manual wheelchair is less complex than a bicycle, and I can
| get a decent bicycle for a few hundred bucks. The fact that
| basic wheelchairs are crazy expensive has little to do with the
| chairs and a lot to do with insane bureaucracy.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Well, bicycles have more demand and volume (presumably), so
| that would play in to it. But yes, bicycles are a good point
| of reference.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Why? The comfort level and ergonomics demands are
| completely different. Bicycles are for a few hours of
| weekly use. Wheelchairs are for 16 hours of daily use.
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| Bicycles built for long duration use - people do ride for
| 16-24 hours straight more than you'd think do exist.
| zxexz wrote:
| How many of them do that every day?
|
| And of those people that do, how much do you think they
| spend on their bikes?
| roywiggins wrote:
| And, when people do use cheap bikes that don't really fit
| them out of necessity long-term, what's the toll on their
| body? It's probably not zero!
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The parent comment is so bizarre
|
| No one who uses a wheelchair does it because they like
| doing it
|
| Everyone who rides a bike for 16 hours a day does it
| because they like doing it, and/or they're an athlete
|
| When you're done riding your bike for 16 hours a day -
| likely one week in a year - you can go to the gym,
| stretch out
|
| The wheelchair guy has to drag himself everywhere
| Mashimo wrote:
| I don't think many people do that, and if so, how many of
| them do it on one that cost "couple of hundreds"?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sure, but those bicycles don't cost 100 bucks they
| probably cost 5000+. The last bicycle I bought was $7000
| and that was midmarket (my recreational cyclist
| standards).
| fvdessen wrote:
| I was recently in Rwanda where seemingly half the goods
| of this very hilly country are transported by bicycle,
| and those are single speed old english style bikes with
| steel frame reinforced with rebar. (they carry hundred of
| kgs on the racks). The bike are run 8 hours a day for
| years and cost $100.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| This is the definitely the standard we should strive for
| when considering the needs of our wheelchair bound friend
| and family. If they want anything more than a 130lb
| wheelchair made out of old rebar they're just being
| selfish really.
| bluGill wrote:
| The recreational market does spend a lot of money on
| bikes. Much of it is of questionable gain already, and in
| the context of Rwanda negative since the recreational
| bike generally compromises comfort for speed - a fine
| compromise for recreation but bad one for most Rwanda
| uses.
|
| However some of what they are spending money on would
| make those bikes in Rwanda much better. Better/more
| comfortable seats can greatly ease the toll on your body.
| Disk brakes would stop the load much better and so make
| them safer. A couple gears would be nice (assuming it
| doesn't compromise drive train strength too much). Modern
| cargo bikes likely have a better cargo position as well.
| geodel wrote:
| In India millions of women are walking miles to fetch few
| gallons of water everyday. I don't get why people in
| California are screaming water shortage. Should be
| possible for Americans to live on a gallon of water if
| hundred of millions live like that in India.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It's very hard to change your standard of living, and the
| standard of living in California is very different. We
| live off of tens of gallons of water a day or more. When
| you have to cut back, it's difficult for your human
| animal to accept it. Population wide, it's nearly
| impossible.
| riversflow wrote:
| Yeah. This is why I'm so pessimistic about long-term
| prospects for the human race.
|
| Living minimally is a _skill_ that society has
| essentially turned into a negative trait. Our planet can
| only support so much, and individual humans are very
| selfish. There are 8 Billion now.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Possible? Sure, and a lot oft of hippie/environmentalist
| types in America do live that way, both in cities and in
| rural areas.
|
| Is it desirable? Not necessarily. The goal is to be more
| efficient with water sourcing, distribution, and usage so
| people have more water to use, not less.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Third party payment markets tend to have prices spin out of
| control. Usually the end user demand is fairly inelastic, and
| the third party is not driven by cost efficiencies in the
| negotiation. Getting into those markets as a new supplier is
| very hard as typically a select few incumbents have
| longstanding relations/deals with the third party.
| jajko wrote:
| Economies of scale and lack of competition.
|
| When you have all the components for a cheap bike made in
| 100s of thousands by ie Shimano, the price goes down
| dramatically. Wheelchairs? Unless there is 1 dominant
| manufacturer its not going to happen to smaller shops, and
| monopoly has its own issues.
|
| When you have regulatory tape which require some steep price
| hikes to cover some specific aspect (which may not be that
| important), combined with above you get what you get.
|
| I was recently wheelchair-bound for a month due to my recent
| paragliding accident (crutches now for at least 1 month more,
| overall an interesting experience of various limits lying
| everywhere you don't even realize until you are there), and
| can appreciate even basic wheelchair and its various
| functionalities. Its simpler than bike for sure, but its also
| foldable (at least mine) and relatively easy to pack into
| trunk of any decent car in a minute (not for me of course but
| accompanying person).
| space_oddity wrote:
| Is there any hope for more affordable options becoming
| available in the future..?
| giorgioz wrote:
| And also economy of scale, there are 1 billion bikes in the
| world VS 65 million wheelchairs.
| eru wrote:
| Interesting, only 1 billion bicycles? I would have expected
| more than that. In most of the places I lived (Europe,
| Asia) there seems to be more than one beater bike per
| person lying around somewhere (and some nice bikes, too,
| but much fewer).
| DrammBA wrote:
| I'm actually surprised it's 1 billion, when you remove
| children, elderly, people simply out of shape for a bike,
| people unable to afford a bike no matter how cheap,
| people with disabilities incompatible with bikes, that
| billion is like 75%+ coverage of TAM.
| bityard wrote:
| Is that 1 billion adult bikes in particular? Because in
| the US, anywhere outside of big cities or college towns,
| children are ALMOST the only people who ride bikes
| regularly.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Lots of people have bikes who don't use them regularly.
| It's the kind of thing you have in your garage and bring
| out on a nice day sometimes.
| eru wrote:
| Some good points.
|
| Many (most?) children have bikes, and lots of elderly
| people have some bikes somewhere in a shed back from when
| they used to be able to ride.
|
| Almost everyone can afford a beater bike. That's why they
| are so common in the third world.
|
| I'm not sure how out of shape you need to be not to be
| able to ride a bike? In any case, I wasn't wondering
| about how many people actively ride bikes. I was
| wondering how many bikes there are.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I don't think most bicycles are designed for 16 hours of
| daily use...
| space_oddity wrote:
| That being said, the significant price gap still seems
| disproportionate
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| How much does a quality ergonomic chair cost vs a pair of
| walking shoes?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In nations where bicycles are the norm, I would not be
| surprised if many of them get used 12+ per day.
|
| NYC is awash in bicycle couriers, and they probably ride
| all the time.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Some of these comments are so bizarre that they could
| only be made by AI
|
| Do people here really not grasp the difference between a
| disabled person being forced to use a wheelchair - which
| they can't get out of casually and stretch about - vs a
| fit person willingly using a bicycle?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| What is the malfunction?
|
| _> I don't think most bicycles are designed for 16 hours
| of daily use..._
|
| Was stated. The answer _directly to the statement_ was:
|
| _> In nations where bicycles are the norm, I would not
| be surprised if many of them get used 12+ per day. NYC is
| awash in bicycle couriers, and they probably ride all the
| time._
|
| No AI needed.
|
| Looks like it might be necessary for interpretation,
| though. That's not something I have any control over.
|
| BTW: I am _quite_ familiar with Serving disabled folks.
| That 's pretty much my job, at home.
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| You cannot get a custom designed bicycle for your body for a
| few hundred bucks, particularly from a US manufacturer
| joelhaasnoot wrote:
| How many wheelchairs are actually truely customized? I hear
| a lot of complaints from wheelchair manufacturers that this
| isn't really customized
| srockets wrote:
| Part of the problem is the cost. Very few daily
| wheelchair users can afford to pay a 5-digit price for
| one.
| tim333 wrote:
| If you look on ebay there are loads of wheelchairs for sale
| from about $100-$200 (PS80-150 if british). They are mostly
| made in China and I think work ok - I bought one for PS80 to
| use with my dad and it was fine. But that was for occasional
| use. I guess if you were to use it all the time you might
| want something fancier.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| That raises a whole host of other issues. They're $200,
| because they don't have to pay their employees or provide a
| safe environment, the Government is subsidizing the
| manufacture or other unsavoury reasons. You can make things
| really cheap if you don't care about your staff.
| alistairSH wrote:
| You probably don't want to sit on that cheap bicycle for 16
| hours a day. Almost guaranteed it won't fit property and at
| best will give you saddle, sores and worse cause back knee
| issues.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yeah, but can you climb chairs with a bicycle? There are
| wheelchairs that can do that.
| rs25 wrote:
| I just want to add some context here because i feel like there
| is a large gap in understanding of what a wheelchair actually
| is. Please click through these and get an understanding of the
| level of detail required to be properly fitted for a
| wheelchair.
|
| https://permobilwebcdn.azureedge.net/media/hylifiyf/creative...
| - note the clinical rationale and notes sections on each of
| these options.
|
| https://permobilwebcdn.azureedge.net/media/4ozh2ary/tilite-s...
| - seating cushions and backrests
|
| https://permobilwebcdn.azureedge.net/media/npxlfuoh/tr-tra-o...
| - current ti lite order form.
|
| https://permobilwebcdn.azureedge.net/media/hjvhuqlw/tilite-p...
| - component list / prices. There are almost 11,000 individual
| parts that are available for purchase for years after the chair
| is sold so it can be supported through the expected life of 5 -
| 7 years usually.
|
| And through all of this you are working with professional
| therapists that are trained to properly size all these
| measurements, because an ill fitting chair can cause more harm
| than good.
| space_oddity wrote:
| Device so essential to daily life is treated in such a costly,
| bureaucratic manner
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> It's mesmerizing to watch. When the laser is done cutting,
| sometimes the leftover material just falls out, but sometimes it
| stays in place.
|
| Please be very careful when _watching_ an industrial laser,
| particularly one cutting shiny metal. I would honestly support
| any reg that puts hard barriers between eyeballs and running
| laser equipment. Invest in a good camera and watch the show on a
| screen.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It is enclosed. They show a picture later and there's a green
| safety window to view the work piece in the machine, that
| material will be designed to block whatever wavelength of light
| the laser is using (most likely IR, and what do you know safety
| glasses for the IR bands are mostly green).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| No. Such materials are designed to let through _all but_ the
| narrow wavelengths expected of the laser. And some IR
| "shields" actually reflect IR light rather than absorb it. A
| proper laser shield should not be engineered to do the
| minimum necessary. Metal works. Wood works. Even blackout
| curtains bought at walmart can work.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Properly rated safety shields can absolutely be transparent
| and properly block the necessary wavelengths. The color
| comes from the wavelengths they're blocking. Weird stance
| to take that the entire industry is wrong about laser
| safety.
|
| Lasers emit a known frequency unless they're extremely
| expensive and designed to create broad spectrums, it's only
| with cheap consumer units you'll see IR diodes being poorly
| upconverted to a different color with IR leakage. These
| cutters use CO2 or fiber lasers and IR is the desired
| output..
| Havoc wrote:
| For context - he has a ~9m sub youtube channel on phones that
| must be banking it. This is a side project that appears to be
| grown out of frustration of disabled wife & seeing the shitshow
| that wheelchair market is. Seems 10/10 wholesome to have this
| disrupted by someone that cares
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| > This is a side project that appears to be grown out of
| frustration of disabled wife & seeing the shitshow that
| wheelchair market is
|
| While it is absolutely true that he cares, I think you are
| selling his long term plans short. The primary growth factor
| for the channel was reviewing phones with the repairability /
| endurance focus, but somewhat recently he expanded to topics
| such as plugging abandoned oil wells which are leaking methane
| and wheelchair mobility issues. From what I understand he has a
| couple similar things in the pipeline.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| i think he's a better than average presenter for a youtube
| channel. I did like his huge bunker videos
|
| my biggest annoyance is his plugging or advertising stuff too
| obviously
| jeanlucas wrote:
| Man has to pay bills
| flutas wrote:
| More like tithe it all to the LDS.
| kube-system wrote:
| Obvious advertising is the most ethical kind.
| password4321 wrote:
| Thank you for pointing this out so clearly, I'd not
| thought about it this way before but this makes perfect
| sense in a "best of the worst" kind of way.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'll take his transparent advertising over "native" ads any
| day.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Agreed. I understand he has to pay the bills but there were
| one or two episodes of the bunker series that really felt
| like fluff to put in between ads.
| joelhaasnoot wrote:
| Would rather have 5 episodes with a 5 min sponsor section
| than one 25 min episode about your way too expensive
| cooling mattress
| yunohn wrote:
| I mean, without the advertising, he wouldn't be able to
| make any videos. Quite honestly tired of people pulling out
| this argument like all content creators need to be
| altruistic trust fund kids.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Let's not forget that he also shoots stuff like the
| cybertruck for fun, which is awesome.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Didn't he also help get some libraries built in Kenya?
|
| I think so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R71uDa3DNw
| imhoguy wrote:
| > abandoned oil wells which are leaking methane
|
| What? That still happens with so much CO2 and climate change
| outrage and people literally gluing themselves to roads as
| protest?
|
| Ok, did more research: "In 2021, fugitive U.S. methane
| emissions from abandoned wells were 295 kilotons--equivalent
| to 8.2million metric tons (MMT) of CO2 with a 95% confidence
| interval of 1.4 to 25.1 MMT, the largest uncertainty range
| among the nation's largest sources of methane (US EPA 2023)."
| https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/orphaned-wells-
| metha...
| daedrdev wrote:
| Which is like 0.1% of us co2 emissions
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| I actually looked it up, per EPA in 2022 6343mmt of CO2
| were released in U.S -
| https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-
| gas...
|
| So the estimate would range from 0.12% to 0.4% (for 8mmt
| and 25mmt respectively).
| hmottestad wrote:
| I've been watching his channel for a long time and remember
| back before they were together.
|
| If I remember correctly he first built her a wheelchair to go
| hiking in. That was kinda the beginning of their relationship.
| I think there was also a stair climbing wheelchair involved at
| some point, but that could have been a sponsored thing rather
| than something he built.
|
| He's also been working on an electric humvee. So he's a lot
| more than just the channel where he scratches and tears apart
| phones.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| It's explained not very far in the article what the first
| wheelchair he built her was.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So I follow some disability activists and it's kinda depressing
| just how hostile society is and people are to people with
| disabilities. And this crops up everywhere.
|
| So for wheelchairs, for example, airlines routinely damage or
| destroy or lose wheelchairs, like 1000+ a month [1]. You need to
| be aware that wheelchairs typically need to be customized for the
| user. You typically can't just buy a wheelchair on Amazon and
| you're good to go. Using a replacement wheelchair can represent a
| significant safety risk.
|
| Only now is the DoT starting to take action to curb this [2]. But
| what other group of people would such reckless disregard and
| gross negligence be tolerated for?
|
| We just had Hurricane Helene wreak havoc through Appalachia.
| Usually in these situations people on the outside will criticize
| those who didn't evacuate. This happened in Katrina too. But you
| know who often can't evacuate? Disabled people.
|
| Look at our response to Covid. The powers-that-be wanted everyone
| to get back to work and be busy worker bees that could once again
| produce value that would be exploited. So isolation restrictions
| were loosened. We capitulated to the irrational and completely
| self-centered whims of antivaxxers. There was a war on mask
| mandates. This went so far in some places as to literally _ban
| masks_ [3].
|
| This is all despite some people being immunocompromised and Covid
| never going away. We're essentially decided those people can just
| die.
|
| But beyond them, you know what else Covid was? A mass disabling
| event. I'm talking about long Covid. This affects probably
| millions of people. These once healthy people are going to learn
| the hard way what the wanton disregard for disabled people looks
| like.
|
| Anyway, I applaud efforts like cheaper and faster to produce
| wheelchairs. They won't suit everyone but we shouldn't tolerate a
| situation where it might take months for someone to get a
| wheelchair, But can we stop destroying wheelchairs too?
|
| [1]: https://blurredbylines.com/articles/broken-wheelchairs-
| airli...
|
| [2]: https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234708784/airlines-
| wheelchai...
|
| [3]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wearing-masks-public-now-
| illegal-n...
| codedokode wrote:
| By chance, don't you know why we cannot have electric
| wheelchair for everyone who needs it? Manual wheelchair seems
| to be not very convenient and to require lot of effort to use
| it.
| roywiggins wrote:
| we barely supply good _manual_ wheelchairs to everyone who
| needs them, the article talks about why not.
| srockets wrote:
| Motorized wheelchairs are not a good fit for everyone. They
| are much bigger, heavier, harder to transport (you need a
| van), and even with a clutch to allow emergency non-motorized
| use, because of their design and weight, they can't be really
| used without a motor, so you're f*ked if the battery runs
| out.
|
| They're good for some uses, for some folks, but are not a
| solution for all.
| tpmoney wrote:
| Newer battery tech is helping improve the "compactness" of
| motorized chairs. We have a "fold and go"
| (https://www.foldandgowheelchairs.com/) which can fit in a
| car trunk (though still want a full size sedan or bigger if
| you plan on putting anything else in there) and at 60lbs is
| only about 50% heavier than some of the heavy "standard"
| chairs out there. Still not something you're going to move
| well on your own without an able bodied assistant or some
| specialized equipment, but compared to older motorized
| chairs it's a huge improvement
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's odd seeing the number of dismissive comments missing that
| there are whole categories of wheelchairs for different purposes.
| It's like asking why XPSs exist when there are Chromebooks,
| something most people commenting here would immediately realize
| as a silly question because they suit different needs and
| functions but the idea doesn't come up because it's an unfamiliar
| problem.
| m463 wrote:
| I sort of think of left-handed people.
|
| I am right handed, but overused it and switched to a left-
| handed mouse.
|
| There are basically infinity right-handed mice, but basically
| zero left-handed mice, most of which are hedged ambidextrous
| mice.
|
| so looking at office chairs and standing desks and all kinds of
| ergonomics oriented towards healthy sitting, it seems amazing
| that there isn't more competition for people who sit more than
| anyone.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Sounds like a nice application for 3D printing tbh. Take the
| electronics from a regular mouse and fit into a left-handed
| housing with a range of shapes/sizes etc available! Call it
| "second hand"
| Miraste wrote:
| At least one guy on reddit did this and is still sending
| out the files for people who ask: https://old.reddit.com/r/
| MouseReview/comments/enxzgg/lefty_g...
|
| It seems like a massive pain though. Rebuilding a non-
| symmetrical mouse the other way would take electronics
| tinkering as well as 3d printing, and probably a ton of
| work to get all the connections and tolerances right.
|
| I am left handed, and I use trackpads with my left hand,
| but I gave up on lefty mice years ago and use an ergonomic
| one right-handed.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I'd assume the electronics are very modular and probably
| just clip into place in a single unit. You do need a
| battery compartment or something though, and the buttons
| need to fit well. Wheel can come from donor mouse.
| Miraste wrote:
| Unfortunately they are not. Mouse motherboards are
| generally shaped like the mouse, i.e. right-handed, and
| the side buttons are on ribbon cables too short to move
| to the other side. Impossible to reorient without serious
| work.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Sounds like someone could buy a bunch of different mice
| and x-ray them to look for the easiest candidates.
| Looking for symmetrical-ish electronics, most of all.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I felt comfortable with "neutral" mouses that aren't shaped
| right or left that I could use either with right or left hand
| vasco wrote:
| Most left handed people I know (me included), use the mouse
| with the right hand. Might be a bubble though, but I never
| thought to get a left handed mouse, or left handed scissors
| or most left handed things. There's a few things that really
| don't work (I play my drumkit with hands reversed), but most
| things are fine.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I tried using a mouse in my left hand in left handed mode
| back in the day. Eventually, I got tired of changing the
| settings on shared computers at home/school, and I realized
| it wasn't any more or less hard to use the mouse with my
| right hand. Today, I use a right handed vertical mouse.
| Interestingly, I play guitar right handed, despite being
| inspired to play by Kurt Cobain. My girlfriend got me left
| handed scissors as a joke, but man, they actually feel
| better.
|
| My sister used to use a neutral mouse, with her left hand,
| on the left side of the keyboard but in "normal" or "right
| handed mode". Now she has a laptop with a big touch pad in
| the middle.
| volkl48 wrote:
| I do what your sister used to do. (Left hand mouse use,
| buttons left at default).
|
| Even game that way. Started using it that way as a kid,
| by the time I learned it was possible to switch the
| buttons that seemed less natural than leaving it as
| default.
|
| Also made it much easier to use shared computers in
| school labs and the like.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I am lefty and occasionally use the mouse left-sided when
| I have right arm injuries. What I don't do is swap the
| buttons. That way, nothing has to change, I can switch to
| the preferred side at any time, and coworkers aren't
| stymied when they need to drive the computer.
| -mlv wrote:
| A lot of left-handed people are actually cross-dominant or
| selectively ambidextrous.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Keyboard shortcuts aren't as convenient with the mouse on
| the left. The most useful ones are all biased to the left
| of the keyboard. Left Ctrl is also easier to hit
| reliably.
| qwertycrackers wrote:
| I would have been left handed when an early childhood
| injury caused me to switch to right. A few years ago I
| thought about that and tried re-learning some skills and
| tasks with the left hand.
|
| It's specific to each task but I can normally get the
| left handed version as good or better than the right. I
| am willing to bet most people could do this, you just
| have to spend a bit of time awkwardly re-learning.
| vasco wrote:
| In school for fun when it was boring I many times would
| do writing exercises with the right hand (like write a
| line of A's, a line of B's, etc) and after a couple of
| weeks I got the right hand up to maybe 80% speed and
| accuracy of the left, but I realized I needed to do
| constant training to keep it as good as the left
| (admittedly the left had daily training of many hours due
| to having to take notes, etc). But it does sound
| plausible!
| martopix wrote:
| Same here.
| j2bax wrote:
| I switched to an Apple Trackpad and it basically cured my
| wrist issues that I was experiencing.
| otteromkram wrote:
| I use dual mice for variety sake.
|
| The Logitech G300s has been solid as a lefty. They used to be
| cheap enough that replacing them every couple of years
| (depending on usage) was feasible, but I'm not sure if the
| market has driven up prices since then.
| anotheruser13 wrote:
| Elecom makes a nice left handed trackball. Employers don't
| often provide ThinkPads, so I usually use a standard mouse on
| the left side without swapping the buttons.
| MisterTea wrote:
| It's not odd because as you pointed out this is a tech oriented
| site and not a wheel chair oriented site.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The hope is that it is a site full of thoughtful people
| who've done at least a couple difficult projects. For that
| sort of person, the first instinct should not be to try and
| invalidate a project based on a couple seconds of googling.
| We should know that sometimes the problem takes more than a
| couple seconds of research to get to the real problem
| statement.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's not but the concept that there may be more than one sub-
| type of a product (here: manual wheelchairs and their
| subtypes: "medical" [0], transport, etc) because there are
| many different scenarios for using any product is a
| universally applicable idea. You don't have to know much to
| see the cheaper types, see that they're physically different
| and figure out that there's a reason for there to be
| different types.
|
| It's an endemic problem in many fields but you see it a lot
| with programmers. It's the same class of cognitive bias that
| births ideas like "the law should be like a program, that
| would be much simpler" that were (still are?) big in tech
| circles. Lazy pattern matching and thinking that
| understanding one complex thing (programming) makes one
| automatically better at unrelated fields (complex
| manufacturing).
|
| [0] The type most people are most familiar with, large
| wheels, collapsible, handles for assistance from others.
| Generally not used by people who are able to move under their
| own power.
|
| [1] similar to "medical" but without the large back wheels so
| they're only mobile with another persons help or by scooting
| around using your feet.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are forms of technology other than software, and
| wheelchairs are one of them. YCombinator has invested in
| dozens of medical device startups... including devices in the
| mobility category:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/trexo-robotics
| MisterTea wrote:
| You expect too much of people.
| kelnos wrote:
| Please stop. These cynical drive-by comments add nothing
| to the discussion.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I get it but the acting surprised feels condescending and
| annoying itself. Maybe I should have articulated that
| better. There are always ignorant people. Always. Take
| that opportunity to answer their questions and move on.
| Not this "I know right. gawd. youd think theyd know
| better..." come on man, that's just rude. Like of course,
| there are gonna be questions and confused people. Don't
| be condescending and act all surprised.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That sort of "I googled for 30 seconds, and found a cheaper
| option, why does this project exist" type response is anti-
| curiosity and anti-learning.
|
| It is _possible_ that the YouTuber guy is a total idiot and
| decided to make a $1000 wheelchair instead of buying a $200
| one, but that shouldn't be a default assumption, haha.
| singhrac wrote:
| I couldn't upvote this enough. A lot of drive-by cynicism I
| see these days is really just a lack of curiosity and bad
| faith assumptions (this guy must be an idiot, etc.).
|
| I see it a lot in practice especially when discussing early-
| stage business ideas.
| chipdart wrote:
| > A lot of drive-by cynicism I see these days is really
| just a lack of curiosity and bad faith assumptions (this
| guy must be an idiot, etc.).
|
| You're talking if guys pitching overpriced and underquality
| gear is completely unheard of, or if flawed business ideas
| are a rare occurrence.
|
| I get it, support and enthusiasm is always nice to have.
| But if you descend into the real world you'll see that more
| often than not you'll see a mix of fraud and overconfident
| people pitching undercooked ideas that they under deliver,
| and you're criticizing those who might as well have
| experienced that first-hand for a few times.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Well, I guess since I disagree with you, I must be an
| inhabitant of this non-real world. Dang, I wish I'd
| thought to deem myself the arbiter of reality.
|
| But from here, floating in the imaginary clouds, the
| error of the cynics was pretty easy to spot. It was that
| there are different types of wheelchairs and the cynics
| were just googling up the bargain-basement mass produced
| ones. I guess in the real world everything (including
| medical devices) is one-size-fits-all?
| kelnos wrote:
| There's another choice, though: instead of being a drive-
| by cynic, just _move on and don 't comment_.
|
| It's not like these people are providing a valuable
| service, steering everyone away from the dumb scams.
| They're just pattern matching and assuming everything
| they doesn't seem to make sense (in their generally not-
| well-informed opinion) must be bad.
|
| It's unnecessary, and is noise just as often as it's not.
| chipdart wrote:
| > There's another choice, though: instead of being a
| drive-by cynic, just move on and don't comment.
|
| Unfortunately that recommendation is also pushed by
| snakeoil salesmen.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > just a lack of curiosity and bad faith assumptions
|
| The word you're looking for is "arrogance." HN comment
| sections are no better than reddit, if not worse, with
| people arrogantly making all sorts of statements that are
| demonstrably false with a simple google search.
| zeroq wrote:
| HN demographic is worse in the sense that you have more
| people who think if they earn more than they peers their
| opinion weights more.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >It is possible that the YouTuber guy is a total idiot and
| decided to make a $1000 wheelchair instead of buying a $200
| one, but that shouldn't be a default assumption, haha.
|
| Seems insane to assume that but we see it in tech all the
| time where someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on
| reinventing something that already exists.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is possible, but one thoughtful takedown by somebody who
| actually knows the field is worth more than an infinite
| number of uninformed googled results.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| If you have some actual knowledge about a thing and can
| explain why it's pointless and already existed then that's
| a great thing to post. That's very different from just
| assuming that something you have no knowledge about is
| pointless, though. We certainly see lots of pointless
| reinventing in tech, but if something appears to be a
| pointless reinvention of something you could find in 30
| seconds with no prior knowledge, it nearly always _isn 't_
| a pointless reinvention of that and you just don't know
| enough to understand what's different.
| II2II wrote:
| > Seems insane to assume that but we see it in tech all the
| time where someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on
| reinventing something that already exists.
|
| There are a couple of reasons for that. The most obvious is
| that they did not do their research prior to embarking on
| the project. The less obvious is they did extensive
| research before embarking upon the project. Plenty of tech
| popped up in the 70's and 80's that flopped or only found a
| niche market, that later turned out to be quite popular.
| Sometimes the tech wasn't ready, other times it was just
| too expensive when it was introduced, yet other times he
| market simply wasn't ready for it.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on reinventing
| something that already exists.
|
| I think it's worse than than. Amongst the people doing the
| work, someone usually knows that there is a product out
| there that already does the job, but the higher ups think
| they know better.
| bigiain wrote:
| That works the other way too.
|
| Somethings the higher ups don't know anything in detail,
| and just believed the new hire guy who said "I can't
| believe you're still using jQuery! We need to throw this
| all out and re write it in Angular!".
|
| And then believed the next new hire a few years later who
| said "I can't believe you're still using Angular - they
| screwed up the 2.0 to 3.0 migration so badly how can we
| trust them any more? We need to throw this all out and re
| write it in React!".
|
| And then believed the next new hire a few years later who
| said "I can't believe you're still using React, Facebook
| are awful! We need to throw this all out and re write it
| in Flutter!".
|
| And then believed the next new hire a few years later who
| said "I can't believe you're still using Flutter - Google
| are bound to graveyard it any day now! We need to throw
| this all out and re write it in React - its new features
| are _amazing_!".
|
| And today they're 2 years into the latest rock star new
| guy's 6 month rewrite of the entire front end using Rust
| and wasm. He's _almost_ got it working on his laptop,
| it'll be ready for testing with the staging backend
| platform any day now.
|
| Meanwhile the company's B2B sales team are doing several
| million dollars of MRR from clients using the "legacy"
| jQuery front end from 2012. And the backend Java guys are
| all WFH and haven't had a single bug fix of feature
| request ticket in 3 years. They cosplay "scheduled
| maintenance" every 3 months by sending out notification
| emails to all customers and then just writing reports to
| management claiming successful updates with zero downtime
| and no measurable increase in latency or error rates.
| Half of them have second jobs or side gigs that pay more
| than their salary there.
| asddubs wrote:
| his wife is in a wheelchair, i think he did know
| wheelchairs exist before making a wheelchair company
| nine_k wrote:
| Indeed. If I google for 30 seconds, and see a stark
| contradiction with what somebody offers, I try not to
| conclude that that the guy in question is a fool. This is
| always possible, but rarely true.
|
| Instead I conclude that likely _my_ understanding is lacking,
| and maybe educating myself a little bit would be beneficial.
| Either I find out something new and potentially useful about
| the world, or finally see through a swindle and understand
| how it works, which is always a good skill to exercise.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > anti-curiosity and anti-learning
|
| You nailed it. If I could go a bit deeper, I think the drive-
| by cynicism comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of
| people.
|
| Statistically, you are probably not _significantly_ smarter
| or dumber than most people you meet. In other words, someone
| who has spent months or years on a problem _probably knows
| more about it than you do_ if you're just now reading about
| it. So if someone with more experience is doing something you
| think is dumb, your first reaction should be to ask why
| rather than dismiss.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Especially if one of the people is an engineer/maker and
| the other has the lived experience of being a wheelchair
| user. It's wild to think they might have embarked on this
| venture without first googling for thirty seconds to see
| what else might be on the market.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| One of the more valid use cases for AI is scanning forums an
| auto-labeling/hiding low quality comments.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Low quality comments or comments you don't agree with?
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| It's like being outraged and asking "Trek and Cannondale
| exist, why do we need fifty other bike makers?" When some new
| manufacturers pop up.
|
| I don't get the negativity.
| hatthew wrote:
| My cynical assumption is that most startups start out with a
| grand vision that they overpromise and underdeliver on.
| Especially if it's a content creator, where I assume that
| they started with a need to monetize their brand and then
| came up with a product idea.
|
| This guy claims to be different in that he has enough money
| already and he's just trying to make the world a better
| place, but pretty much every startup makes claims about how
| they're different and therefore they're going to succeed.
| They can't all be right. I'd prefer to hear unbiased opinions
| about viability from intelligent people on HN/reddit/twitter
| rather than biased opinions from the guy who's trying to
| market his company.
|
| I'm not saying that this wheelchair is going to flop, I'm
| just defaulting to skepticism of new ideas in general.
| zeroq wrote:
| > anti-curiosity and anti-learning
|
| It's the epitome of current state of the internet. We're on a
| social platform with coins to be gathered, which doesn't
| induce a deep, well though discussion, rather short snarky
| comments that gets clicked.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Asking a question is "anti-curiosity"?
|
| The piece raises at least a half-dozen possible answers, not
| all of which are compatible. The author pushes the "low cost"
| angle quite heavily at the start, so there being much cheaper
| options is reason enough, IMO, to ask the question what the
| point of the project is.
|
| They say the chair won't make money, but it's a for profit
| company. They say they want it to be employee owned and to
| make their employees lots of money.
|
| The author basically says 'it's a good second chair' (not a
| quote) that lacks in some features their own chair has. The
| piece also talks about cutting out expensive considerations
| like assessment by a physio and assessment of pressure points
| - that doesn't sound great, although if it's just a second
| chair, maybe those matter much less.
|
| It seems more like the YouTubers decided to make a $2M
| wheelchair - real estate, machinery, employees, etc. Then see
| if they could spin it out to a short lead-time, online
| customer-specified production.
|
| Good luck to them. Hopefully it will turn into a great
| example of a cooperative that's producing well-engineered
| affordable wheelchairs.
| jojobas wrote:
| He's certainly not an idiot, and it's clear he wants to sell
| $1000 wheelchairs in order to earn money.
| Mashimo wrote:
| He does not get paid for it though. At least he says so.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| Probably because of the title. A 1$k wheelchair doesn't sound
| like anything special. While their selling point is that it's
| a $1k wheelchair _that is actually worth that money_.
| fotta wrote:
| In this case the OP is targeted towards people who are already
| familiar with this type of chair, so I can _sorta_ understand
| why the reader who has only ever seen the hospital style chair
| is confused.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's the lack of curiosity in not taking the small extra
| mental step of thinking "what niche does this clearly
| physically different product address?" that's the most
| galling/disappointing. Or having done the search and found
| very cheap alternatives thinking, "clearly the person setting
| up a business creating and with a partner that using these
| products daily missed that this already exists" immediately
| instead of looking at why JerryRigEverything might not be an
| idiot wasting his money.
| maxglute wrote:
| I think its just how cheap / rudimentary the basic model look
| for 1K. Like it seems there's a viable Indochino / send
| measurement to Asia manufacture model and get bespoke product
| back for fraction of the cost. Or some sort of modular break
| down kit that you can take to a bike shop to tune to custom
| needs for less. I admire Jerry's effort, but I think people
| correctly sees $200 product that cost $1000 in US, and somehow
| it's considered "affordable".
| rtkwe wrote:
| I haven't seen anyone pointing to an actual equivalent
| product available for $200 with shipping. The collapsible
| medical chairs I've seen when searching are not equivalent
| devices, they're heavier, more tiring and less durable and
| comfortable than the kind of chair in the article. This type
| of chair is semi-custom made to fit the user so they don't
| injure themselves or have unnecessary extra medical issues
| from using a chair all day and out in the world.
| maxglute wrote:
| I don't think/know there's equivalent manufacturer over
| seas, just insinuations it could probably be done much
| cheaper over seas, customization included. High performance
| light weight wheel chair "feels" like there's a lot of
| overlap with making bicycles and I find it hard to believe
| you can't find a shop in an East Asian bike factory that
| already has the machines and labourers with years of
| experience bending aluminum pipes to avoid amortizing capex
| costs. Dude wants Made In America, quick shipping time
| (which I wager is important) which is fine, but it's going
| look like a $200 product that cost $1000.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Dude wants Made In America, quick shipping time (which I
| wager is important) which is fine, but it's going look
| like a $200 product that cost $1000.
|
| We sorta have that with everything though, you can source
| direct from china for a fraction of the cost, but the
| often pay several multiples of the actual cost for
| someone else to import it and provide the level of
| support and QA you expect from products.
| maxglute wrote:
| TW also makes a lot of bikes. The amount of parts and
| fabrication on these wheel chairs don't look close to a
| $1000 bike, but I don't know how much component costs for
| wheel chairs are. Again, speaking from ignorance, this
| looks like $200 of assemble at parts that can then be
| taken to a bike shop to tune up for another $100. IMO the
| disconnect is this looks like such a rudimentary/basic
| product and it's hard to see the value of US premium and
| then discover this is "budget" version.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >The amount of parts and fabrication on these wheel
| chairs don't look close to a $1000 bike
|
| Only because bikes are made up of commodity parts from
| many suppliers which drive the costs down, whereas this
| is mostly bespoke.
|
| It is hilarious that people keep throwing out prices of
| $200 or $500, when $200 might get you close to the cost
| of one of the wheels on this.
|
| >IMO the disconnect is this looks like such a
| rudimentary/basic product
|
| Only to someone that's not familiar with what this is and
| what its competitors are.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| > Only to someone that's not familiar with what this is
| and what its competitors are.
|
| I think that's what people are missing.
|
| His competition is $5k wheelchairs that are often
| pictured with another $10k + of customizations.
|
| I don't think that most people realize that $5k
| wheelchairs don't come with so much as a seat cushion as
| standard.
| maxglute wrote:
| Looks like very little bespoke parts - the front pork
| pieces, that's some worker feeding pipe stock to an
| expensive machine after punching a few numbers for $10 an
| hour. The wheels are commodity, can't imagine the BOM for
| something like this is >$200. Competitors are other
| western companies charging even more exorbitant prices,
| they managed to charge less which is great. But that
| doesn't mean the cost is not still overall absurd for
| what you get. Maybe reasonable American manufacturing
| prices, sure, it's a good value product. I'm not familiar
| with the machine, but I've priced out bending aluminum
| pipes for various architecture details and fitness
| equipment and per piece price is peanuts in Asia compared
| to fabricating in NA.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Shipping will eat labor savings alive for these. Their
| frames are rigid so you'd have to either ship them in
| huge boxes the slow way (terrible for a custom product
| like this [0]), air freight them (probably upwards of 300
| dollars for the size? That's just a wild guess though) or
| ship them disassembled and take the durability hit that
| would require. If they were less customized to fit the
| user you could but it's not the product we're looking at
| so you can't make them in mass quantity and ship them to
| a warehouse in the US like you can with a lot of less
| custom products.
|
| It's also far less like bikes than you're thinking. They
| have 5 major adjustments for a total of about 25k
| different configurations. And those don't seem to be
| majorly exclusive to each other either.
|
| [0] Check out the number of tweaks available in their
| configurator:
| https://notawheelchair.com/pages/configurator
| maxglute wrote:
| Looking the configurator (very cool btw) the bespoke part
| is a few bends in the front fork, rest of it is modular
| parts that are fastened together. Looks like you can
| stuff hundreds of these in a container to bring piece
| cost down. I do think the big selling point is speed
| since they talk about months of lead time from other
| vendors. Regardless, looks like much cheaper than
| competition - I admire what they're trying to do.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Stocking when you have 25k different variations is a
| whole different nightmare and massive cost that probably
| rivals the cost of just making them to order with the
| right equipment here in the US. Maybe there are common
| enough configs that people take you could prestock a
| subset and make to order the rest but it's still a huge
| amount of work and cost to manage and stock that vs the
| option they took of making the frames to order.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I don't know anything about wheelchairs, but there's a
| similar very high-margin market for eyeglasses. Freakonomics
| did a podcast about it:
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-do-your-eyeglasses-
| cost...
|
| Frames have crazy 100x markups and the market is dominated by
| a small number of companies. They interviewed people from
| Warby Parker (a newer, more inexpensive brand) and even they
| said they had to _raise prices_ so they didn't seem like
| knock-offs.
| leoedin wrote:
| How can you even judge how basic it is just from the photos?
|
| A $10k bike designed for racing has the same kind of
| components as a $100 bike from Walmart, but every single one
| of them is far, far better - better materials, higher
| tolerances, a geometry finely tuned to the rider. None of
| that is really obvious until you look closely. A rally car
| looks kind of like a road car, until you realise that it only
| shares a few body panels - every other component is built to
| a far higher spec.
|
| Maybe this would be a $200 product if he was mass producing
| them to the same dimensions. But he's not, they're custom
| made on order to the dimensions of the user.
|
| I've owned a few low cost Chinese bikes, and while they're
| OK, there's always parts on them that fail because they're
| clearly made to be as cheap as possible. If I depended on a
| wheelchair for moving about every day, I'd be damn sure it
| was well built and reliable. That's the market he's operating
| in.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I think the dismissals come because wheelchair users are
| already painfully aware of the options.
|
| Yes, there are different kinds of wheelchairs, there's no
| reason a premade, presized wheelchair has to cost thousands and
| they don't. The premade chairs certainly serve a need - for
| those who can sort of walk but need the chair to go distances
| (etc).
|
| But the reason for custom wheelchairs is they are for people
| who spend all day, everyday in the chair. And that's where the
| need and the pain is greatest and so exhibiting a "ready made"
| chair just isn't going to impress them.
| enneff wrote:
| If you look at the dismissals in this HN discussion you'll
| find none of them are coming from wheelchair users or even
| people familiar with wheelchairs.
| blargey wrote:
| Nevermind that the article is clearly written by a wheelchair-
| user, for a publication about wheelchairs / related assistive
| implements, and clearly explains the pros/cons of the pricing
| and direct-to-consumer sales model, and includes their positive
| impressions on having used the chair in question as a daily-
| driver.
| piuantiderp wrote:
| Individual preference is offensive to a certain kind of
| worldview.
| roywiggins wrote:
| "I don't get it, you can buy a laptop from Walmart for $75,
| what's the problem"
| xnx wrote:
| Went down a bit of a rabbit hole and found this industry guide to
| Taiwanese contract bike manufacturers:http://www.wheelgiant.com.t
| w/ebook/flib/2024TBS_%E6%95%B4%E6... If there was enough demand,
| I'm betting some of the companies in here could make quality
| wheelchairs real cheap.
| maxglute wrote:
| When bikeshare and scooter was gaining traction, I was hoping
| some manufacturer would look into collapsible electronic wheel
| chair for mass transportation. Maybe stupid, but think a few
| 100 million dollars and 1000s of engineer hours would make a
| pretty sweet slick wheel chair scooter for short commutes.
| manquer wrote:
| > if there was enough demand
|
| I really hope there truly isn't in a real sense.
|
| Old and new wars being fought with anti personnel mine and
| seeing the numbers of young and fit men and women losing limbs
| to uncaring political goals is disheartening reminder there
| well might be.
| fullstop wrote:
| There's a group of people in Australia who recycle bicycles
| into makeshift wheelchairs for people living in countries with
| inadequate healthcare. They pack flat and are assembled on-
| site.
|
| https://wheelchairtrust.org.au/
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Each wheelchair is custom so it's totally different than other
| products.
| xnx wrote:
| Is it totally different? Bikes are made and adjusted for a
| huge variety of body types. I understand there are different
| needs for wheel chair users, but I would think some level of
| adjustment would be possible to accommodate most of those.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| You have to think about scale too. A run of bike frames in
| a particular size, even for the high end, is probably four
| digits for a very niche customer. The cost of jigs and
| prototyping is well spread out.
|
| For a given wheelchair, the market is probably an order of
| magnitude smaller, if not more so. That means that factory
| setup and development costs that amortize to $X00 for a
| bike produced in the thousands, balloons to $X,000 for a
| wheelchair.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Here is what a wheelchair order form looks like: https://ww
| w.adaptivespecialties.com/PDF/TiLite_AeroZ_series2...
| kanwisher wrote:
| not at all I've been buying wheel chairs for my sister for a
| decade now. finally electric ones from china are getting to
| $1500-2000 range, before it was $10k-20k when they can scam
| insurance companies
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Sounds like you aren't buying custom wheelchairs then.
|
| This is what the order form for a custom wheelchair looks
| like. Look at the customization possibilities: https://www.
| adaptivespecialties.com/PDF/TiLite_AeroZ_series2...
| changing1999 wrote:
| I have no knowledge of this specific product area but wondering
| what aspect of the wheelchair in the photo results in this
| seemingly high cost? (to note, I understand that this is still
| far cheaper than other wheelchairs). Is it the material cost? It
| looks like it's just a few pipes, a cushion, and a pair of
| wheels. About the same build as a basic bicycle.
| paulddraper wrote:
| First, have you purchased a bicycle? "High quality" bicycles
| start at $1,000. (quality dimensions = weight, comfort,
| durability, flexibility)
|
| Second, small scale manufacturing is expensive.
|
| Third, large-scale manufactured wheelchairs have the same
| problem as the rest of the medical equipment world: prices are
| subsidized/inflated by insurance.
| changing1999 wrote:
| I've only ever owned fairly cheap commuter bikes like
| Specialized. But even then, the quality and the comfort were
| OK. I guess in this case, small scale and configurability
| makes the biggest difference in wheelchairs vs bikes.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Wheelchair users spend their entire waking lives using
| wheelchairs, more or less.
|
| They are justifiably VERY particular about their mobility.
|
| If you had to spend all day, every day, riding a bike, and
| a failure meant that you would spend days or weeks
| (seriously, wheelchair repairs are SLOW), stuck in your
| house, how seriously would you take your bike options?
|
| A badly fit wheelchair can send disabled people to the
| hospital with really serious problems.
|
| Now imagine that bikes normally cost $5k-$20k. How stoked
| would you be to see someone offering an equivalent bike for
| $999?
| bluGill wrote:
| Mostly the machines the factory uses. You can cut tubes by hand
| and drill those holes, but the machines are more accurate and
| faster. However those machines will cost you in the million
| range each in some cases. (the $1000 Chinese versions for home
| use are kits that will cost you $10k to make accurate and the
| quality means they will wear out fast so while find for
| building a couple they are more expensive than the million
| dollar machines in the long run) That investment needs to be
| amortized across whatever you build and wheelchairs are not
| high volume.
|
| You can't go with cheaper less flexible machines either because
| each wheelchair needs to be somewhat custom fit. That in turn
| means you need to the more expensive machines instead of simple
| jigs that. They also need someone to program the machines for
| your custom fit (or software to create that program)
| changing1999 wrote:
| Fascinating. I assumed that most manufacturing machines can
| be reconfigured to build anything that machine can handle
| physically (i.e. not a particularly specialized machine) and,
| therefore, can be bought for cheap, or used. Coming from
| software I don't have a frame of reference for manufacturing
| cost.
| bluGill wrote:
| Reconfiguerable is common but high cost. most jigs are
| custom made one offs at high cost. every bit of flexibility
| will cost you tens of thousands at minimun and millions on
| the high end. The parts are at most $100, it the
| engineering and skilled machinist time that adds up.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's a relatively small market so the up front capital and
| ongoing labor costs are probably pretty restrictive. Those
| parts are more expensive than you realize though with the
| wheels being the most expensive part if I had to wager, they're
| critical, specialized, and need to stand up to a lot of abuse.
| hinkley wrote:
| I toured the Trek factory when they still made them in the
| US. They'd already drunk from the font of Goldratt wrt to
| Just in Time, but they would set up each day pretty much to
| make one model of bicycle for the whole day. Parts, tooling,
| paint booth, everything. The only thing that changed was
| sizes, and a model of bike tends to have the same geometries
| across all sizes. 78o angle here, 99o angle there. That may
| not be optimal for the rider but it's how you keep prices
| down and keep product lines from getting confusing.
|
| If that's true of wheelchairs, you can get some economies of
| scale even if sizes vary. If it's not, then maybe that's one
| of the things we should tackle.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The bend angle of the tube that forms the seat support down
| to the legs seems like one of their major adjustment points
| for comfort and efficiency so I don't think you could have
| a similar setup. These are essentially semi-custom not a
| simple size based product like a bike. The extra
| adjustments are important because the users are in them
| many more hours a day so small problems can cause long term
| issues.
|
| Their configurator has a very good model of what the chair
| will look like and you can see just how many knobs you can
| tweak and how that requires changing the core layout of the
| frame in a way that makes the kind of sizing system just
| not feasible. Scroll down on the Frame page to get to the
| fit sliders.
|
| https://notawheelchair.com/pages/configurator
|
| edit: Did the math and there's something like 25k different
| configurations they're selling before accounting for paint
| colors, just in the frame measurements. Granted, that's not
| accounting for the improbability or incompatibility of some
| parameter sets but that's still going to be a couple
| thousand different configs to build and stock. It doesn't
| work like a bike.
| hinkley wrote:
| On a bike you have a little bit of flexibility due to the
| way the seat post works. Both in how the seat attaches
| and adding curves to the post, particularly for
| triathletes who like to favor their hamstrings over their
| quads, and sit considerably farther forward than any
| 'normal' cyclist would.
|
| I know I've seen wheelchairs where the back was a tube
| that went into a tube. If you put the curve in the
| replaceable part you get more adjustment but less
| support. Generally the tolerances on bikes are very tight
| and medical equipment seems to be all over the place.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They've done a lot of work it looks like to put in user
| level adjustments everywhere they can but to tweak the
| parameters on the frame page I don't see a great way to
| replace that. The curve it's tweaking is setting the
| angle between the legs and the seat already.
| hinkley wrote:
| Yeah I went through the build your own UI after your last
| reply and it looks like a pretty complex bracket there
| for adjusting the angle of the seat back. From the look
| of things it's an adjustment versus another bracket.
|
| It looks expensive, but I suspect that not being able to
| change your mind after you order is awful. Anything from
| muscle gain to tweaking your back probably makes you want
| to adjust your seat a bit. So maybe it's worth however
| many dollars that takes out of the $1k budget to be
| preserved in the design.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The seat back and center of gravity position both look
| fairly adjustable. The main fixed quantities seem like
| they're all on the frame page; seat heigh front and back,
| frame depth (back of seat to knees), front angle, and
| frame taper. The rest of the options seem pretty
| adjustable looking at the frame there's a lot of mounting
| holes to change all the other measurements.
| srockets wrote:
| You also lacks knowledge of bikes: a bike built from similar
| materials, at a similar quality of craftsmanship and weight
| would cost you north of $5k.
| ossobuco wrote:
| Or, what happens when you take greed and profit out of the
| equation.
| jeanlucas wrote:
| Hah, now it makes more sense why Jerry was being so active on
| GoodTimesWithScar Twitter feed. Scar is also a wheelchair user,
| but is mostly famous for his YouTube landscaping videos.
|
| Nice to see this, Jerry is not just another YouTuber grifter,
| he's a maker and has been involved building for his wife for a
| while.
| tredre3 wrote:
| His name is Zack, not Jerry. I know, it's confusing.
| jeanlucas wrote:
| Meh, lots of people call him Jerry for a while now. I know
| you're not aware because you're not a fan and just wants to
| one up on HN.
|
| He said already he chose Jerry in honor of his grandfather
| who was a fixer. On an interview with MKBHD (btw, I know
| MKBHD is not literally that guy's name) he said he just rolls
| with it when someone calls him Jerry.
| tredre3 wrote:
| I know you're just trying to gotcha me, but as a fellow fan
| you probably already know that he prefers when people call
| him by his given name.
| jeanlucas wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eG4PZaf7QxY
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My former girlfriend gets powered wheelchairs through the Ontario
| Disability Support Program, and I witnessed and learned that the
| whole thing is such a fraud.
|
| Her powered chair was just over $20,000 and was a terrible piece
| of machinery. You were definitely not getting the "medical
| devices have to be reliable" premium. And any time the technician
| came out, we got a bill to forward to ODSP for thousands of
| dollars, even for the simplest fix.
|
| And of course there was zero competition: there was one and
| exactly one vendor you could go to for this stuff. They were, of
| course, terrible with customer service, terrible with technician
| competence, and their products were consistently terrible.
|
| I'm usually instantly skeptical of any tech startup that wants to
| airdrop into a problem space and disrupt things, but in this
| case, I'm 38,000% confident that there's something that can be
| done with this one.
| badjoak wrote:
| You had to have cashflow to pay those bills and wait for a
| redund? Sounds terrifying.
| loufe wrote:
| I have an Ontarian optometrist in the immediate family. I
| helped them set up a very tangled and innefficient ODSP
| claims process. It's a terribly, terribly managed program.
| I'm not sure if the OP has to pay and be reimbursed, but I
| wouldn't be surprised. That family member has to wait upwards
| of a year sometimes to be reimbursed, occaisionnaly they wait
| that much time only to be refused because of a "problem"
| which is not detailed anyways, so the business has to waste
| time to figure out problems. All the while, they are in the
| hole for that money.
| nick3443 wrote:
| Sounds like someone should make them available to lease
| Waterluvian wrote:
| No, ODSP covered it. The vendor would basically have an
| outstanding balance on the account until ODSP sent them the
| money. Still had to send the paperwork in to get that all
| going.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >And of course there was zero competition: there was one and
| exactly one vendor you could go to for this stuff. They were,
| of course, terrible with customer service, terrible with
| technician competence, and their products were consistently
| terrible.
|
| It's probably not a cost effective market to be in and getting
| a government monopoly is the only way to make it viable in the
| first place.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Are there open source community for all things biomedical devices
| ? even partial exoskeleton (not joking, looking for practical
| attempts to help elders)
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Most of this stuff is still a bit too expensive for DIY,
| Festool have an ExoActive exoskeleton that might be
| repurposable - though I think it's designed mostly for holding
| weight above the head.
|
| There is the 'body braid' that is probably more suited for the
| tasks that the elderly have trouble with.
| modeless wrote:
| I just watched a factory tour of this yesterday:
| https://youtu.be/oBId9w7NgAQ Seems like they are setting up a
| pretty fancy operation using their YouTube money. Pretty cool!
| stevenseb wrote:
| Test comment for automation
| hinkley wrote:
| It did not occur to me that wheelchairs are this expensive. But
| then again they make fewer of them than bicycles and a bicycle
| you want to be on hundreds of days a year can start at that price
| and go up into car prices.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| That's really cool. But I also notice that when I go to thrift
| stores in my area that there are often wheelchairs available for
| $25 or less. Similar for walkers and other mobility devices that
| tend to be really expensive new.
| BanazirGalbasi wrote:
| This is why reading comments before contributing to the
| conversation is useful. There are already several comments
| outlining why a $25 wheelchair, especially a used one found at
| thrift stores, isn't comparable. Build quality, weight, fit,
| convenience, portability - all of these are reasons to spend
| more on a wheelchair.
|
| We don't question why different computers are more expensive
| than others even though they all do the same job. We don't
| question why one bike costs more than another despite using the
| same mechanism for propulsion. Wheelchairs are another good
| with varying levels of quality at different price points. It's
| arguably more important for quality goods to be accessible
| because for many, they're living in these things constantly.
| basirulbillah wrote:
| 1k for a wheelchair is unbelievable for me. In Bangladesh they
| cost about 7 to 9 thousands taka which is equivalent 60 to 100
| USD. I don't understand.
| loufe wrote:
| There are obvious COL differences between regions which can
| account for a huge part of that. There's a reason we lost our
| manufacturing base in the west to China.
|
| Are the chairs you're speaking of customized? Are they using
| the components of a similar quality? That may be a component,
| as well.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I don't understand.
|
| Almost completely different products.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Those are not custom (typically come pre-sized) and are
| generally not very usable outdoors to get around other than
| short distances. Sometimes known as "hospital wheelchairs". For
| people with temporary injuries who are mostly taking time off
| from work it's fine.
|
| This is a everyday wheelchair that people can use to get to
| somewhere a mile or two away and back, often used by people to
| get to work or around a university campus independently. It is
| custom made to your measurements:
| https://notawheelchair.com/pages/configurator
|
| https://www.sammcintosh.com/blog/wheelchairtypes0620
| delfinom wrote:
| Those are shitty wheelchairs not meant for use by people
| permanently disabled by western standards. We have plenty of
| imported cheap wheelchairs on Amazon in the US.
|
| I mean sure you could use them, but they aren't customized to
| your body dimensions for life long comfort. They won't hold up
| to long term abuse actually going outside daily for life and
| work.
|
| In the west, we actually legally mandate buildings and
| transportation accommodate wheelchair users, so they can
| actually live like normal people. Heck they can also legally
| drive.
|
| Back to the wheelchair, the foundation of this $1k wheelchair
| which is bent aluminum instead of welded metal is a massive
| increase in reliability where a cheap chair could instead break
| a weld and leave someone stranded in the middle of nowhere.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| It's cool how they get both capital and distribution from their
| YouTube channel. Are there any other "real" business started from
| YouTube like this?
| tills13 wrote:
| for better or worse the entire Mr Beast empire and, to an
| extent, Logan Paul and his ventures (Prime, etc)
| ruune wrote:
| These never made it further than "I'm buying this because I
| like MrBeast/Logan Paul/etc." at least as far as I can tell.
| These wheelchairs are supposed to become good enough that any
| regular disabled person that can't walk* will seriously
| consider them even without knowing who makes them.
|
| *English isn't my first language, no idea what a proper
| inoffensive way to describe the target audience is. I mean no
| harm :)
| al_borland wrote:
| I ordered a Beast Burger on Door Dash without having any
| clue it was a Mr Beast thing until it showed up and was
| heavily branded. I wanted a burger and figured I'd try
| something new. I had never really watched any Mr Beast
| videos at that point. For whatever reason, he is never
| recommended to me.
|
| The seasoning was so strong it was a bit hard to eat. I
| assumed it was covering up for lower quality meat or
| something. I have no desire to order one again.
| huvarda wrote:
| Mr Beast burgers werent even a real restaurant. Theyre
| just faceless ghost kitchens with a mrbeast sticker
| slapped on top.
| al_borland wrote:
| I've tried various things from ghost kitchens via Door
| Dash. Some are better than others.
|
| From the little I understand, someone like Beast Burger
| would come up with a recipe, then provide the supplies
| and recipes to the ghost kitchen to make it. If the ghost
| kitchen is really Chili's, it's not the Chili's burger
| showing up when a Mr Beast label, it's Chili's Employees
| in the Chili's kitchen, making the Beast Burger recipes.
| dangus wrote:
| As it pertains to the original query of this comment
| thread, whether this is a real business model, it doesn't
| really matter that it's not "a real restaurant," what
| matters is whether it's a viable business that makes
| money.
|
| Mr. Beast burgers is not really that different than
| McDonald's franchising if you really think about it. Most
| people don't buy a McDonald's burger based on who the
| franchise owner is and how they run their restaurant,
| they're buying a McDonald's burger because of the
| McDonald's brand and product.
|
| McDonald's captures 80% of ~~revenue~~ net income and
| leaves only 20% to franchisees.
|
| Essentially, the concept is the same: the business value
| and profit margins are owned by the brand and the
| laborious act of delivering the product locally is a
| thin-margin interchangeable "ghost kitchen." Not only
| that, the power dynamic is one where the franchise
| dominates the franchisee. The physical kitchen, its
| owner, and its employees are replaceable, the nationally
| recognizable brand is not.
|
| I would argue that ghost kitchens basically take the
| franchise concept to the logical 21st century conclusion:
| essentially, why bother doing all the expensive stuff
| that McDonald's does with their franchises when your
| storefront is digital and anyone with a flat top, fryer,
| and a pulse can follow the directions to produce your
| fast food product?
| hollerith wrote:
| >McDonald's captures 80% of revenue and leaves only 20%
| to franchisees.
|
| Most of the revenue goes to paying employees, real estate
| cost (rent or depreciation), energy cost and cost of
| ingredients. You mean, "captures 80% of the net income".
| Or profit.
| dangus wrote:
| Yeah I think you're right.
|
| The numbers I've been able to find are:
|
| 4-5% of gross sales as franchise fee
|
| 8-12% of gross sales as rent (McDonald's corporate is
| often the landlord)
|
| I.e., 12-20% of gross sales are going to McDonald's.
| ChickeNES wrote:
| My understanding is that they had massive QC issues. I
| ordered one on a lark and actually liked it, ended up
| getting a few times. But from what I've seen online that
| was not a universal experience.
| kalleboo wrote:
| The quality control on the Mr Beast Burger was so bad he
| sued the virtual kitchen company that was producing it
| https://www.aol.com/mrbeast-sues-shut-down-
| ghost-110013067.h...
| twobitshifter wrote:
| those logan paul Prime drinks are now in every convenience
| store. I don't notice any logan paul related obvious
| branding.
| astura wrote:
| From what I understand these drinks are massively popular
| amongst children (which I guess is Logan's primary
| demographic). I've never seen anyone over 30 buy one.
| dangus wrote:
| I disagree mostly on the basis of Prime.
|
| I see Prime in basically every convenience store, it seems
| to be a generally successful drink brand.
|
| I knew about the drink before I knew that it had anything
| to do with Logan Paul and KSI.
| al_borland wrote:
| The stuff Zack and Cambry are doing seems like it can exist
| even without the YouTube channel, once it reaches a point of
| awareness in the community and becomes self-sustaining.
|
| Most of the other YouTube products I see seem like they'd die
| quickly without a YouTube personality to prop them up. They
| aren't really filling gaps in the market, or doing something
| new, they're just slapping their name on something as a way to
| diversify their income sources. Some do seem to put a good
| amount of effort into helping with the design, or even work
| directly with the manufacturers, but they're entering crowded
| and well served spaces, where their primary differentiation is
| their YouTube channel. Fans are their target market, and I find
| it unlikely that most will grow beyond their audience. I don't
| see LTT becoming the next Craftsman, or MKBHD becoming the next
| Nike.
|
| Zack started out with the knife, which was a play on his
| YouTube success, but the various wheelchair adjacent things
| he's made stepped it up considerably. Others could do the same.
| It makes sense to test the waters and make some mistakes on
| something small before shooting for the moon. Time will tell
| how it plays out for all of them.
|
| If nothing else, having some of these examples could inspire
| kids to want to start businesses making stuff instead of just
| wanting to be YouTube famous.
| chasebank wrote:
| Youtuber Mark Rober started CrunchLabs from his youtube
| channel.
| joemi wrote:
| I think you mean promotion instead of distribution?
| senkora wrote:
| There's Hank and John Green's https://good.store e-commerce
| website that sells socks, coffee, and soap and donates 100% of
| the profit to charity.
|
| It's a borderline example since they largely sell to their
| fans, but the products have broad appeal and are not branded
| with their names like most YouTuber products.
|
| They are aiming for the "Newman's Own" model of creating good
| products and then donating 100% of profit to charity.
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| Two passes around the holes with the laser will get rid of the
| rewelding issue.
| nothercastle wrote:
| The BOM for this wheel chair is probably 200-300 of just wheels
| and bearings maybe more. People who say this can be bought for
| 200$ are completely out of touch. You can't even buy a decent
| bike for much under a grad new and bikes have much better scale.
| andybak wrote:
| My bike cost PS75
| unreal6 wrote:
| was it new?
| r0fl wrote:
| A decent bike for a child costs more than that these days in
| North America.
|
| You either bought this bike used, stolen, in 1989 or are
| trolling.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Even a cheap Walmart kids bike costs more than that now.
| (Even the toddler bikes are reaching up there in price.)
| hug wrote:
| This thread is bonkers. I'm not even American and it took
| me all of two minutes to find a bike for $118 USD (or about
| 90 GBP) available from Walmart. Here it is:
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/1121295
|
| It looks like a perfectly serviceable bike, if not the most
| amazing experience. I bet you with proper maintenance it
| could last you decades and thousands of miles.
|
| People in this thread who are claiming a new bike is nearly
| $1000 are on another planet.
|
| I get that this isn't a wheelchair, doesn't have anything
| to do with wheelchair prices, and I would certainly not
| want to rely on this thing in the way a wheelchair user
| must rely on their chair, but c'mon, guys, stop with the
| wild hyperbole about bike prices.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/mechanics-ask-walmart-
| major-...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/MTB/comments/z2d5h5/walmart_bike
| _un...
|
| So for $118 you get a really poor quality bike that you
| probably can't repair. Or perhaps you'll end up with one
| that's just unsafe. $400-500 is probably a reasonable
| price point, but that'll get you something that's
| adequate at best. Heavy, clunky, and unpleasant to ride.
| lostlogin wrote:
| That 'Heavy, clunky' bit is key.
|
| A good bike is addictive to ride. It's like a sharp knife
| through butter.
| hug wrote:
| Yes, the $118 bike is not going to be much fun, and may
| be assembled dangerously. It's still a _bike_ , though,
| and a little TLC and attention to assembly before riding
| will prevent a significant number of problems. Even the
| reddit thread you linked just required some screw
| tightening and replacement of a derailleur -- and a cheap
| Shimano derailleur is $20 from my local bike store.
|
| Even if we completely discount the $118 bike (plus a $20
| part), though...
|
| > $400-500 is probably a reasonable price point
|
| This is a far cry from "much under a grand". Yes, it will
| be heavy and clunky, but it will function in all of the
| ways that it is important for a bike to function.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Yes, the $118 bike is not going to be much fun, and may
| be assembled dangerously.
|
| No, it'll be _built_ dangerously. A cheap Shimano
| derailleur won 't fix cracked welds or a broken frame.
| TLC won't make the frame true. Doubtful it'll last more
| than a few miles really. Yes, it will be
| heavy and clunky, but it will function in all of the ways
| that it is important for a bike to function.
|
| Ehh it'll be the bare minimum that you probably won't
| want to use.
| hgomersall wrote:
| I got a cheap "bike" as a student and regretted it when a
| crank arm snapped clean off pulling away from the lights.
| No serious damage done to me, but the potential was
| there.
| astura wrote:
| >This thread is bonkers
|
| >People in this thread who are claiming a new bike is
| nearly $1000 are on another planet.
|
| HN is absolutely chock full of people who have entirely
| lost touch with reality.
|
| Anyways, my sister rode a $200 bike to work every day for
| like six years. Doing the math, about 19,000 miles. I
| grew up with a cheap Walmart bike and I had it for over a
| decade and probably at least 5,000 miles I would guess.
| hug wrote:
| I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, ten
| dollars?
|
| This thread is now full of people who, with real lived
| experience, will tell you that $200 bike served them
| perfectly well, but downvotes rain in from people who
| spend five times more than a middle-Americans month's
| worth of savings on a bike and won't hear of anything
| less.
|
| It's not often that the class divide on HN is so front
| and centre, but it is here.
| nothercastle wrote:
| 200$ in what year? 1990? Go price out parts even the
| lowest their at a bike store and see what it would take
| to get a complete bike. Sure it might be cheaper in bulk
| but you will be within 30%.
|
| Also everyone assumes assembly labor is free.
| astura wrote:
| >It's not often that the class divide on HN is so front
| and centre, but it is here.
|
| It's an entire forum of people who have never experienced
| scarcity so they can't understand it.
| delfinom wrote:
| Unlike a bike, where able-bodied individuals can take the
| trade off buying it for cheap and risking it breaking a
| weld and having to _gasp_ walk.
|
| People that are handicapped kind of need their wheelchair
| not to break unexpectedly.
|
| I don't see anything being out of touch here. You can
| absolutely get a $100-$200 bike, and it's completely fine
| if your use is casual. You start going up in bike prices
| when you start talking about more and more serious use of
| bikes which is what probably users here think of. Road
| bikes are hyper focused on cutting every gram with the
| most efficient cranksets, MTBs are focused on shear abuse
| and you absolutely will destroy a $100 bike in a month if
| you actually ride seriously.
| amiga386 wrote:
| You just linked to a $118 box of parts (or $217 if you
| want it assembled). This is an absolutely trash bike.
|
| You can get a nice bike that, while not fancy and might
| weigh more than it needs to, will last years and be safe
| provided it's maintained, for about PS200-PS300
| ($260-$400 USD) in todays prices. If you bought a bike
| for $200 years ago, then this is the price bracket you
| were buying into, not the cheap shit. You can then get
| increasingly good bikes as you go to $1000 and beyond.
|
| You seem to be be blithely unaware how shit the cheapest
| bikes are these days. I've had bikes where the crankset
| literally sheared off, where the frame's welds have
| cracked rather than the suspension failing, where the
| brake cables have snapped, where the chain has snapped,
| where bolts have rusted, where the plastic twist-shifters
| can't hold a gear and drop them as you go over
| cobblestones, where things have broken because _the
| minimum wage supermarket employee who knows nothing about
| bikes has assembled it wrong_. This will be the average
| person 's experience with the cheapest-of-the-cheap
| bikes, and the only way they'd be happy with it is if
| they don't really use the bike much, or they keep it
| indoors and don't cycle in the rain, or there are no
| hills where they live, and so on.
|
| It only costs a _little_ more for a hard-wearing, all-
| weather bike. Not thousands more. If the most you can
| afford are these shitheaps, I feel sorry for you, and I
| recommend you look for a bike charity in your area that
| will sell you or _give_ you a decent second-hand /donated
| bike that has been checked over by a decent bike
| mechanic.
| oremolten wrote:
| so out of touch you're using an example of a bike
| purchase from 6 years ago :^) did she also replace the
| tires 3 or 4 times? because no way any bike tire is
| taking 19,000 miles of road use no matter the brand. The
| average price of a new bike more than doubled from 2015
| to 2024.
| amiga386 wrote:
| > find a bike for $118 USD
|
| You didn't find a bike. You found a box of parts. Read
| the page again:
|
| > Mountain Bike Assembly - $99.00
|
| If you want the box of parts _assembled into a bike_ , it
| effectively doubles the price. Also there's no promise
| it's assembled _correctly_ , or that the bike parts are
| actually good. "Proper maintenance" is a handwave for
| spending multiple times the cost of the bike to cover up
| the inadequacies of the bike.
|
| https://www.whycycle.co.uk/buying-a-bike/beware-the-
| bicycle-...
|
| > We generally recommend spending a MINIMUM of about
| PS200 on most styles of adult bike [...] there are some
| reasonable quality bikes at below PS200 but if you intend
| to buy at this price, do so from a reputable bike
| specialist.
| watwut wrote:
| I used to buy cheapest I can get away of everything and I
| have to tell you, there is real difference between
| cheapest bikes you reference, bikes that cost few hundred
| $ and $1000 bike.
|
| The difference is in speed, effectivity (how tired you
| get per km), comfort, how much it hurts when terrain is
| bad and pretty much any other factor you can think off.
| Those cheap bikes are fine if you go to work and back,
| 15min drive each way. Or for kids to play around town.
|
| But if you bike a lot, then you really want better bike.
| nothercastle wrote:
| A good Kids bike is easily 300-400. If you want one that
| weighs less than your kid that's what you have to pay.
| dsego wrote:
| And it makes a world of difference for a small kid as
| I've experienced recently, totally worth it if you can
| afford a lightweight bike (eg 5kg 16" vs standard 8-9kg).
| nothercastle wrote:
| Absolutely, some of these bikes are the adult equivalent
| of 150lb bikes for kids. No wonder the kids hate them.
| Even a light weight bike is like a 70lb bike.
| meowster wrote:
| They do?
|
| I don't remember hating my bike when I was a kid, and I
| had the cheap kind. I also don't remember it being too
| heavy or anything. Of course if I wanted to ride my bike,
| I had to lift the heavy wooden garage door up
| (elementary-school-age). Kids that I volunteer with all
| seem weak and have issues that I never had.
|
| There's a parable about helping a butterfly out of a
| cocoon:
|
| https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2007/12/10/the-lesson-of-the-
| but...
| ndileas wrote:
| You say used like it's a slur. There are many fairly high
| quality bikes to be had used for a reasonable price in most
| areas of the us. With a few tools and a can-do attitude,
| you can make almost any bike fit for use. My current daily
| bike cost about $50. I replaced maybe $100 of bearings and
| other wear parts. Going on year 4 of medium use now; still
| works great.
|
| Obviously not everyone wants a new hobby of fixing bikes.
| But its a great time for almost any hacker or maker.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Would you be willing to spend all day every day on it?
|
| Would you be willing to pin your entire ability to leave home
| on it?
| rtkwe wrote:
| This isn't a bike though... It's a nearly custom fit medical
| device they'll use most of their waking hours where bad fits
| can cause permanent damage to their bodies. Their
| configurator has ~25k options just for the frame fit ignoring
| colors and all the other parts of the wheelchair.
| amiga386 wrote:
| My bike cost PS30 (because I got it from a bike charity that
| sells excess donated bikes to the public to raise funds)
|
| As of today, the cheapest adult bike-shaped-object in
| Halfords is PS116. It's another PS35 if you want them to
| assemble it, although Halfords are infamous for having
| pictures of incorrectly assembled bikes _in their own
| catalogue_
| metadat wrote:
| https://bikesdirect.com/
|
| Lots of good bikes in the $300-500 range. I've had one for more
| than 12 years and thousands of miles without issue or drama.
|
| I paid $300 for a single speed road bike from BD in 2012, it
| looks fancier than it is with a carbon fiber fork. Added some
| Gatorskin tires and it's worked ever since, I only clean and
| lube the chain every 5 years so far. Made in Canadia.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| To second this: I've owned three "Motobecanes" [Bikes Direct]
| and one of them is still _going strong_ , since 2014.
|
| The purchases from 2009 was stolen, and the 2011 bike didn't
| survive a gnarly crash -- to no fault of BikesDirect.com
| lostlogin wrote:
| Please clean the chain more!
|
| The feel of riding it after makes it worth it, and a decent
| degreaser makes the job trivial.
| metadat wrote:
| I wait until it's noisy >..<
|
| Agree, after a fresh cleaning it's silky smooth!
| nothercastle wrote:
| Most companies have a basic of the basic bikes in the 400-500
| range but these are built with cheap parts that won't last
| more than a season. A step up from that would be a 700-100$
| bike that's more likely to last. For daily wheelchair use
| don't expect the 500$ level parts to be good enough.
| Tepix wrote:
| You're replying to someone who just stated they have such a
| bike and it has already lasted 12 years.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| They have a single speed bike, which is a lot cheaper and
| not what most people mean when they want to buy "a bike".
| Adding gears will add at least 100EUR to the price, for
| entry level components.
|
| They also said they replaced the tires with gatorskins,
| which are 40EUR a piece.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| I would assume the wheelchairs that prompted this are
| single speed also though, making it an apt comparison?
| zeroq wrote:
| Good wheels costs 500-1000 $/E for aluminium, carbon costs
| more, but for most people is really not neccesary. Premium
| tires like GP5k cost close to a 150 a pair.
|
| Not saying that the wheelchair is provided with these because
| I haven't checked the spec, but saying you can have a bike
| for $300 is like saying you can buy shoes for $10.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| On the bike comparison, we should keep in mind that a sub-par
| bike isn't much of an issue for the general public, as
| requiring more energy is fine (even sometimes seen as an
| advantage) for able bodies, and the bike breaking during a
| trip will usually mean just walking from there. Bikes'
| defaults will seldom be critical short of an accident
| happening.
|
| You don't have that luxury with a wheelchair, you'll want
| decent efficiency and better reliability, which means better
| parts and better construction overall. That's where top end
| bikes are a more reasonable comparison IMHO.
| nothercastle wrote:
| This is a good point. Also most people don't really ride
| their crappy bikes or do so knowing that it has weird
| problems like gears not shifting correctly in part of the
| range or random shifting.
| syntaxfree wrote:
| Resale value is important for wheelchairs. My dad had an electric
| one for about 8 months before he passed on, and the TCO was well
| under the price of all these alt concepts.
| robocat wrote:
| Hopefully someone does the same thing for rollators (walking
| frames). I bought a few second-hand for my mum and they were all
| had disgustingly terrible usability. Brakes that didn't work
| properly (huge safety issue). Parts poking out (and flying brake-
| lines) that would catch on everything, or cause mum problems.
|
| One sharp bit at the wheels damaged the skin at her ankle and she
| couldn't do anything for weeks to recover. It was a very serious
| problem caused by thoughtless design.
|
| And we are in New Zealand which is better than many places. It is
| terrible watching people struggle in other countries (or lack
| access to the simplest requirement).
|
| Good usability is hard enough to find for the smart and strong.
|
| It is extremely hard to find for the weak and infirm. Especially
| when supplied through government services!
|
| Finding her a wheelchair was hard because she is tiny and needed
| a teen sized one. But everything available second-hand or through
| our social services was designed for heavier people with wide
| arses (imported chairs?). Luckily found a wheelchair manufacturer
| in my city that had one designed for a teen on special (end-of-
| line - not manufacturing standard wheelchairs any more - changing
| to focus on expensive specialist sports chairs).
| xyst wrote:
| That's a wholesome story. Hope the company stays employee owned
| for a long time. Seen too many companies which started like this
| but after exchanging a few hands (ie, ending up in the hands of
| grand children). It ends up getting scrapped for parts and sold
| to the highest bidder.
| acyou wrote:
| If it pans out, looks like an OK way to get a backup chair. But
| we still need the mainstream way, which is the seating
| specialists and therapists to accurately spec, size and adjust
| the chair with the user in it.
|
| Curious if they will go get FDA approval, so that they can get
| the chair properly funded. I suspect that the same people who
| don't have health insurance also won't have $1000 lying around.
| If the chair is funded, they should be able to access a larger
| market and help more people going that route.
|
| For power wheelchairs, FDA application process is a huge reason
| they have limited competition and are so expensive. For those who
| love to wave their hands and cut red tape, I think it mostly has
| to do with people not dying because they are set on fire by power
| wheelchair battery fires, or getting crushed by their wheelchair
| actuators.
|
| I am just curious about this from a safety perspective. The FDA
| approval process covers a lot of ground. Who makes sure the
| chairs are safe? Who checks the pinch points? Who crash tests the
| transit tie downs? Who does fatigue testing? Who does tip-over
| testing? What happens if someone is using the chair and gets hurt
| due to a material or design flaw? Who makes sure the chair fits
| properly and users don't get repetitive stress injuries? Who
| tests the upholstery to make sure it is fire retardant? Who
| checks the chair with the user in it to make sure they have
| posture that doesn't lead to severe long term problems?
|
| I, for one, would not consider sidestepping FDA in order to
| ethically and legally answer for all of those risks. But despite
| all of that I admire the sentiment of this project, it certainly
| seems to be done with the best of intentions.
| codedokode wrote:
| As I understand, it doesn't even have a motor? Why cannot we have
| an electric wheelchair for everyone today? How do you climb
| uphill (or from an underground passage) without a motor?
|
| Also, I don't know anything bout wheelchairs but googling shows
| that there are Chinese electric wheelchairs below $1000 (don't
| know anything about their quality).
| sterlind wrote:
| Traditional power chairs are _much_ bigger and heavier than
| lightweight manual chairs. They 're a nightmare to transport
| unless you have a custom van with an elevator. They also can't
| handle curbs.
|
| Ultralight manual chairs are often foldable, and light enough
| that you can transfer out of your chair into the driver's seat
| of a car, take the chair apart and put the pieces in the
| passenger's seat of a normal sedan. That level of independence
| is huge. Also, you can pop wheelies over curbs and other
| obstacles.
|
| Finally, pushing yourself keeps you in shape, since you miss
| out on the baseline exercise from walking. Otherwise you
| decondition and get weak and fragile. Power chairs are for
| those who can't push themselves sustainably.
|
| As many others have commented, every user's disability and body
| is unique. You're spending 16 hours a day in the chair. If it
| doesn't fit you, you'll get pressure sores or strain injuries.
| The cheap ones are for people who don't need to use them that
| much.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Power-assist chairs are pretty neat though, I knew a guy who
| basically DIYed one, I think from a kit, starting with a
| manual chair. He could wheel for miles on it and keep in
| shape.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| If it's a lightweight wheelchair custom to your body
| measurements (not a cheap amazon product) the going uphill is
| fairly easy. There are also attachments like the SmartDrive for
| steeper grades.
|
| Unless you don't have function in your arms, it's best to avoid
| a fully electric wheelchair.
| not_the_fda wrote:
| Quite frankly this is against the law.
|
| Wheelchairs are considered a class II medical device. Just
| because you are cheeky and say its "not a wheelchair", its still
| a wheelchair and is subject medical device regulation.
|
| A wheelchair can cause a sorts of harm if not designed properly
| and built of high quality.
| patmcc wrote:
| This looks like a very cool project and I'm happy to see it.
|
| But please, to the author: give us some real price comparisons! I
| don't know how much a wheelchair costs. After reading this
| article, I still don't. Just be crystal clear and say "a simple
| manual wheelchair, approved by insurance, is often $4k, with $1k
| paid out of pocket" or whatever.
| volfonibros wrote:
| From their front page : "For more than three decades, New
| Mobility has published groundbreaking content for active
| wheelchair users."
|
| Fair from them to assume the (average) reader is familiar with
| the subject.
| jojobas wrote:
| There _electric_ bikes way under $1000, and allow frame bikes
| under $200.
|
| Just checked and there are $400 wheelchairs out there. How is a
| $1000 wheelchair an achievement?
| nojvek wrote:
| Yessss!
|
| Made in America with humans and CNC robots.
|
| That's the future we should be aiming for.
| FpUser wrote:
| Nothing against a product (assuming it does not fall apart) but
| what I see should cost $200. This is what is fucking wrong with
| our Western World.
| stevage wrote:
| I'm surprised there isn't some cheap option from China. There
| must be millions of wheelchair users around the world, it's a
| small market but it's not _tiny_.
| sizzle wrote:
| Tapping into the collective wisdom of wheelchair enthusiasts of
| HN. What would you recommend for my parent, they are using a
| crappy Medicare approved Medline wheelchair that's like $300 on
| Amazon.
|
| They can't use their right side of their body really due to a
| stroke paralysis. They can wheel around with one arm and leg.
|
| The wheelchair is like starting to fall apart. What should I I
| get them that will last many years? Thanks!
| skylurk wrote:
| I know nothing about wheelchairs, but have you considered one
| with a joystick?
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| There are a lot of variables. You can ask an occupational
| therapist about what sort of wheelchair would be best.
|
| If it's a case where they move themselves indoors but get
| pushed by others outdoors, it arguably does not matter.
|
| But if they are independent outside the home, you need a custom
| chair suited to them.
| beej71 wrote:
| Home crap. I thought at first this was advertising an expensive
| wheelchair. TIL.
| pkphilip wrote:
| $1k for a manual wheelchair? and that is considered cheap?
|
| I have no idea why a wheelchair should be that expensive. We get
| them here in India for far less - you can buy pretty good
| wheelchairs for much less than $100. You can get powered
| wheelchairs for around $500.
|
| https://www.amazon.in/b/ref=dp_bc_aui_C_3?ie=UTF8&node=11365...
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| Those are not good wheelchairs for independent people to spend
| 16+ hours in.
|
| I work in EMS and see all kinds of "budget" wheelchairs and
| they'll all shit.
|
| The parts alone for this lightweight chair have to crack $300.
| asddubs wrote:
| I don't doubt it, but just out of curiosity, could you
| elaborate the ways in which they're shit?
| leghifla wrote:
| see my earlier post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41721976
| dfgsdfgwef wrote:
| Wheelchair market is ripe for IKEA.
| srockets wrote:
| Don't forget labor: welding lightweight, exotic materials
| requires a lot of experience, as every imperfection in the
| weld will lead to it cracking with time, which would be
| extremely dangerous.
| jumperabg wrote:
| I am not a wheelchair expert but $1k is quite a lot, also there
| are quite a lot of cheap options in Europe for less than ~$350
| and some of them are covered by the public health care system.
| dfgsdfgwef wrote:
| Here in Malaysia we can get pretty good quality wheel chair for
| US$46. I am genuinely surprised to see people consider $1k
| cheap for a wheel chair!
|
| https://www.lazada.com.my/products/gt-medic-germany-ultra-li...
| delfinom wrote:
| Customized to your dimensions wheelchair. Because people
| shopping for these are permanently disabled and are looking for
| long term comfort and performance. Performance meaning the
| chairs can actually be used to enjoy life instead of being a
| fragile "medical chair".
|
| There are plenty of sub $200 wheelchairs on US Amazon.
| leghifla wrote:
| Let me use a car analogy.
|
| I have no idea why a car should be more than 10k. On Amazon you
| can get a go-kart for less than 100:
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=go-kart
|
| It is really the same comparison. A true every-day wheelchair
| or a "hospital" wheelchair that will make you sweat after 10
| yards
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| $1000 is exorbitant for a non-motorised wheelchair. Here's [1]
| amazon.in offering a lot of options at ~$50. I bet these guys
| could import it from India and it wouldn't cost them more than
| $200.
|
| [1]
| https://www.amazon.in/s?k=wheelchair&crid=22DWLE90LFB7O&spre...
| roywiggins wrote:
| How many ergonomic office chairs go for $50?
|
| Wheelchairs take several orders of magnitude more abuse and
| need to cope with several orders of magnitude more complex
| needs than your average office worker and your average nice
| ergonomic office chair is hardly cheap.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Ergonomic office chairs are a ridiculous rip off too.
| delfinom wrote:
| Can you ask the Amazon seller how much it costs to custmoize
| the wheelchair to my specific dimensions?
|
| While you are at it, can you ask them how much it costs to make
| the frame out of a single piece of bent aluminum so there are
| no risks of welds snapping and leaving me stranded?
|
| You know in the west that wheelchair users actually go outside
| right? We legally mandate that buildings and transportation
| require accomodations for wheelchairs. People in wheelchairs
| even drive cars.
|
| Wheelchair users that are active need far better quality frames
| than "hospital wheelchairs" you can find for $50. And you can
| already buy these on Amazon.com US. There is no need to get
| into a game of trying to compete with the existing importers.
| pjdesno wrote:
| Just wondering - why is it that a bunch of tech bros who would
| think nothing of spending $2-300 on some fancy-ass keyboard
| because it's incrementally more comfortable to their fingertips
| than a $15 one from Microcenter think that a person doesn't care
| about the quality of a wheelchair they're going to be stuck in
| for all their waking hours?
| elicash wrote:
| Given your wonder, you should consider checking out the
| article. They clearly care a lot about customizations and
| comfort.
| roywiggins wrote:
| More to the point, why are a bunch of techies who are probably
| sitting on $3000 ergonomic office chairs wondering why a good
| wheelchair might cost a few thousand?
| pentae wrote:
| Why are we assuming that this isn't a quality/comfortable
| wheelchair?
| zaps wrote:
| Wheelchairs... engagement presents... it never ends!
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I just did a search for wheelchairs on the German version of
| Amazon. I'm not in the market but I was just curious.
|
| https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/bestsellers/drugstore/28602980...
|
| There are lots of models with very reasonable prices and
| features; mostly well below 1000 euros. Including a few electric
| ones. Manual ones seem to be generally well below 500 euros. At
| 1000 euros we're talking some seriously tricked out models with
| all sorts of features that I'd probably want if I was in the
| market. I'd probably spend a bit more. And I'd be very surprised
| to not get support from my insurer for this.
|
| The model in the article pretty bare bones in comparison. Not
| just a little bit. Like really bare bones. I'm sure it's great
| and ergonomic and really good quality. But what's the real story
| here? Inept US manufacturing or corrupt US insurers? Or both?
|
| For reference, I just found a very reasonable looking electric
| wheelchair for 999 euros by a company called WISGING. With some 5
| star reviews from buyers. In stock. Would arrive around 9 October
| if I ordered it now. 20km range, apparently.
|
| The stuff on Amazon looks like it comes mostly from China where
| they are probably producing these things in large volumes to
| provide affordable, decent wheel chairs for whomever needs them
| around the world.
|
| The world is bigger than the US and people use wheel chairs all
| over the place. The kind of pricing and quality cited in the
| article in the US would be completely unacceptable in most parts
| of the world. And never mind the shipping times. Is it not
| possible to simply import these things? I'm sure there are some
| tariffs to deal with but even so, what's stopping people here?
| roywiggins wrote:
| it's funny seeing comments like this on the same website where
| people insist- not unreasonably- that buying $3k ergonomic
| office chairs and motorized sit-stand desks for office workers
| is a must. Why can't they sit on piled up packing pallets? It's
| much cheaper and still kind of chair-shaped.
| Netherland4TW wrote:
| I don't believe the parent comment is saying people who need
| wheelchairs should get a cheaper _worse_ option, they are
| pointing out that reasonable options in Germany exist for
| less than a grand whereas in the US, these reasonable options
| are borderline unaffordable
| roywiggins wrote:
| The Amazon results in the US are basically the same. You
| can buy chairs for $200 in the same way you can buy a bike
| from Walmart for $200. $200 chairs aren't suitable for day-
| to-day mobility, especially outside. This article I found
| in another comment explains the difference:
|
| https://www.sammcintosh.com/blog/wheelchairtypes0620
|
| Hospital chairs and everyday chairs are both technically
| wheelchairs, but they are totally different products for
| different purposes.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| We're not talking about tech bros here but ordinary people
| desperate to get any wheel chair at all and then having to
| settle for some garbage quality insurer approved over priced
| thing that may or may not ship on a 6 month schedule.
|
| I don't think these wheel chairs have any magical properties
| over the stuff used in Germany. Other than that they are
| really expensive.
| roywiggins wrote:
| You can buy that sort of chair in America too, often called
| "hospital" chairs, for about the same price. They are "one
| size fits all" and therefore don't fit anyone. They are not
| designed to be used long-term. This link from another
| comment explains the difference:
|
| https://www.sammcintosh.com/blog/wheelchairtypes0620
|
| If you need a wheelchair for a couple weeks it's fine. If
| you need it for life, not so fine. People who can't afford
| a proper day chair or are mired in insurance hell sometimes
| make do with them, but they can _suck ass_. They 're
| totally different products and are suitable for different
| uses.
|
| They're different chairs; $200 hospital chairs on Amazon
| have no relationship to the price of the sort of chair the
| company from the article is working on.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41716302
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I would love to see some comments from German wheelchair
| users on this. I don't think US has particularly high or
| different standards for this stuff. I do know its
| healthcare system is a bit of a basket case.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The chairs on Amazon.de and Amazon.com are the same exact
| cheapo "hospital" chairs that aren't suitable for long-
| term use for most people. Germans aren't all zipping
| around on cheap hospital chairs any more happily than
| Americans are.
|
| https://www.amazon.de/-/en/PEPE-Wheelchair-Lightweight-
| Trans...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Medical-Wheelchair-
| Removable-Fo...
| s4i wrote:
| If you're not in the market, I find it ironic you think you can
| assess if that $999 electric chair or those sub-$500 manual
| chairs are good deals. From the other comments here it seems
| like they aren't.
| delfinom wrote:
| Everyone is whooooooshing on this because they literally don't
| understand using wheelchairs.
|
| Not-A-Wheelchair is offering wheelchairs customized to your
| dimensions. Many insurance wheelchairs that cost $$$$$ are also
| custom built/fitted to your dimensions. There are absolutely
| cheap wheelchairs in the US. But people in wheelchairs due to
| permanent disabilities want comfort and rightfully deserve it.
| The designs being worked on here by Not-A-Wheelchair are
| basically all "lifestyle" chairs, rather than boring "temporary
| injury" chairs.
| flower-giraffe wrote:
| There should be an IKEA for medical devices relying on scale to
| absorb design, testing and regulatory compliance.
|
| The AirPod hearing aid feature and other OTC hearing aids from
| headphone manufacturers demonstrate it's possible to leverage
| modern consumer electronics improvements for devices with a
| higher engineering barrier to entry than a wheelchair.
|
| I think paying a premium for anything via insurance is
| detrimental to markets and only benefits bottom feeding bandits
| and deferring or deflecting the cost.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm really curious about the hearing aid feature, but haven't
| seen any review actually featuring a patient using it in a real
| world situation. I was assuming there would be pre FDA approval
| reviews, but doesn't seem to be the case.
|
| The older accessibility feature didn't seem to be that great,
| and I'm pretty eager to see how much it improves through the
| complete revamp of it before throwing money at it.
| BaudouinVH wrote:
| Meanwhile in Europe, you can buy a wheelchair for 558 euros
| (about 620 USD).
|
| https://monfauteuilroulant.com/Fauteuils-Roulants/Fauteuil-r...
| ninalanyon wrote:
| In the UK you can buy a simple wheelchair for 132 GBP:
| https://www.uk-wheelchairs.co.uk/ugo-essential-self-propelle...
|
| And what look like slightly fancier ones for between 300 and 500
| GBP: https://www.millercare.co.uk/collections/self-propel-
| wheelch...
|
| A magnesium alloy framed one is only 450 GBP:
| https://www.mobilitysmart.co.uk/magnelite-self-propelled-whe...
|
| So what am I missing?
| permo-w wrote:
| it seems to be similar with hearing aids. I recently saw a
| video explaining that the new airpods will be usable as hearing
| aids. the video went on to explain that this will make them
| great value for deaf people as hearing aids can run into the
| thousands of dollars. I just checked and you can get hearing
| aids in my country for less than $100. so what's going on?
|
| I'm guessing this is either a non-problem, i.e. the expenses
| are being exaggerated by competitors; or it's some kind of
| private healthcare thing where everything is insanely expensive
| because the government doesn't negotiate prices centrally
| tim333 wrote:
| My dad bought hearing aids that cost like PS2000 (private,
| UK). The market here is kind of split between fairly mundane
| ones you can buy in shops for PS100 or so (or free on the
| NHS) and fancy ones you get prescribed by an audiologist with
| computer sound processing that are more like PS2000.
|
| My dad's never actually cracked his biggest problem which was
| if you are at a table with many people talking, picking out
| one conversation. It looks like the coming Apple AI may
| actually be able to do that. It's a hard problem technically.
| pomatic wrote:
| Actually, it isn't that hard a problem technically, you
| just need a directional mic. I'm deaf, I have NHS issued
| equipment, and I have a specific setting that makes the
| mics more directional. Additionally (slightly off topic for
| the reply, but perhaps of interest) I also have the option
| of using a discreet wireless mic about the size of a pencap
| that I can give to presenters or pass round the table.
| Again, NHS issued, for which I'm very grateful.
| vel0city wrote:
| "Hearing aids" in the US is a specific medical item. They're
| programmable with audiograms to the specific individual's
| hearing needs.
|
| There are those cheap kinda-sorta hearing aids in the US as
| well, but they're not supposed to be sold as medical devices.
| conductr wrote:
| I don't know much about wheelchairs but I watched the video in
| the article and by the looks of it these are a certain class of
| wheelchair and they don't look comparable to what you've linked
| to. My guess is photos are deceiving and there's a handful of
| features worth having if you spend your waking moments in one
| of these things. The reviewer in the video mentioned some
| features he liked and disliked, wheels specifically can be a
| huge factor and tend to be expensive upgrades
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| There are wheelchairs with specific features, such as one-
| handed folding, so you can get in and out of the car on your
| own. Models for people with specific needs, different levels
| of independence and physical ability (hemiplegics).
|
| NaW offers a fairly basic product, which doesn't look
| foldable, for example.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| Same in France (literally the first Google link):
| https://monfauteuilroulant.com/Fauteuils-Roulants/Fauteuil-r...
|
| It looks like a US specific problem.
| roywiggins wrote:
| You can buy that sort of chair in the US for cheap, too. It's
| not the sort of chair that is being sold by the company in
| the article.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| My first kagi result also shows many options below AUD $1000
| (USD $700 or so):
|
| https://www.buywheelchair.com.au/
|
| I suspect it's like anything in the US - despite much of the
| global research being done there at taxpayer expense, Americans
| seem to get screwed over on anything health or medicine
| related. And they continue to argue that their health system is
| a good one, for some weird Stockholm Syndrome-esque reason I
| suppose.
|
| I would assume the wheelchairs I linked above are made in China
| and anyone enterprising could import them for < $500 USD per
| unit. I also assume their insurance cartel would have an
| argument why they're not suitable, despite being suitable for
| the other 7.8B people in the world.
| rs999gti wrote:
| > Americans seem to get screwed over on anything health or
| medicine related. And they continue to argue that their
| health system is a good one, for some weird Stockholm
| Syndrome-esque reason I suppose.
|
| "U.S. allies ride free on American defense spending. Health
| care, indeed, is a kind of second NATO."
|
| https://archive.is/sI50E
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| You're right. Historically, a significant amount of medical
| innovation came from the US due to the gross abuse of the
| US taxpayer.
|
| > If the world's largest health economy limited drug
| companies to "fair" returns -- as other countries try to --
| then few new drugs would be created.
|
| This simply isn't true as peacetime modern governments are
| continually turning on the tap for medical and health
| research, with little to no impact on the public system:
|
| https://vantagemedtech.com/what-country-leads-the-world-
| in-m...
|
| Both you and the article you linked seem to work off the
| assumption that nobody would have filled the void without
| the US. But motivation is reduced when someone else is
| doing the work for you.
| vel0city wrote:
| > I suspect it's like anything in the US
|
| I suspect its more of you don't really know the situation at
| all.
|
| You can get these cheap wheelchairs in the US as well. Here's
| one for ~$150US.
|
| https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/drive-medical-silver-
| sport...
|
| You wouldn't want to spend every day of your life in one of
| these chairs though. You're fundamentally misunderstanding
| the market for wheelchairs.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| > I suspect its more of you don't really know the situation
| at all.
|
| > You're fundamentally misunderstanding the market for
| wheelchairs.
|
| You're correct, hence my terms like "assume" and "suspect".
| Can you enlighten me? My research has not helped me
| understand the daily impact and variances between a 1x and
| 50-100x priced product. In most industries the difference
| is very obvious with this large of a gap.
| vel0city wrote:
| It is obvious if one bothers to actually look. But
| instead, you just wanted to hate on the US instead of
| spending even a minute looking and understanding. Try not
| letting your biases overwhelm your outlook in life and
| actually look at reality instead of jumping into
| assumptions.
|
| The cheap products we've shared here just have a single
| list of specs for the dimensions. Here's an order form
| for one of those expensive chairs:
|
| https://permobilwebcdn.azureedge.net/media/npxlfuoh/tr-
| tra-o...
|
| Just look at how many different widths and lengths and
| angles and diameters these things are optioned out to.
| The different sizes, shapes, and styles of support
| inserts. And for a lot of those measures is not just that
| it is adjusted to those sizes; it's _built_ to that size
| by order. There 's not just a stock room with size 1, 2,
| and 3 chairs there; they're all custom made to order.
| Because everyone is different, with many in wheelchairs
| having _very_ specific needs in terms of shape and
| support. It 's like comparing a one-size-fits-all t-shirt
| to a custom-tailored suit and expecting it to be the same
| price, comfort, and fit.
|
| And then on top of that all the components used in the
| higher end wheelchairs are just way nicer and far more
| rugged. Far better bearings. Higher quality fabrics and
| padding (most of those cheap ones are just plastic
| slings!). Wheels which are far truer and better built.
| Things which are welded instead of just cheap bolts and
| nuts holding it together.
|
| Having a chair that doesn't fit you right or doesn't
| support you properly leads to more injuries. RSI
| injuries, pressure injuries, joint injuries, circulation
| issues, all kinds of other problems. You're bound to
| develop a whole host of issues if you're going to use one
| of these cheap chairs all day every day for your life.
|
| It's like asking what's the difference between a wooden
| stool with a wobble and a $5,000 ergonomic rolling and
| reclining desk chair. Acting like those differences are
| non-obvious. Except, it's something the owner _has_ to
| use every day of their life to go practically everywhere
| and do anything. For someone who has to be in the chair
| every day of their life, it is not just luxury. It is
| injury prevention. It is making their challenging life
| just a little bit smoother.
|
| I'm certain whoever actually foots the bill for a nice,
| custom wheelchair wherever you are is probably spending
| similar-ish money for a similar-ish product. Maybe it is
| a private insurer, maybe it is the government. But if its
| someone actually needing to spend their life in a chair,
| I'd hope whoever is paying buys something far nicer than
| the cheap chairs we've linked here. They're not good for
| anything more than being wheeled around in a hospital for
| a short trip with an orderly pushing it. Or if you're
| just needing a chair for a few weeks to a month or two.
|
| I do agree the US healthcare system is trash, but not
| because custom wheelchairs have a somewhat high cost. Its
| trash because so many end up needing to cover that high
| cost out of pocket. The people making a high-quality
| wheelchair from high-quality components should be well
| compensated in the same way someone making a really nice
| office chair should be well compensated. But since people
| _need_ these to effectively function, cost shouldn 't
| prevent people from accessing them IMO.
| leoedin wrote:
| These wheelchairs are custom built to your dimensions. They're
| not adjustable one-size-fits-all ones.
|
| There's another article by the same author about their quest to
| get a custom titanium chair paid for by their insurance -
| https://newmobility.com/finding-the-right-wheelchair/
|
| It's really interesting to learn about all the variables that
| make a good chair - pressure distribution, the seat height,
| castor width, centre of gravity and other geometry variables.
| And all of those are unique to your body.
|
| According to other comments here, a custom titanium chair costs
| about $4k, so $1k is cheap compared to that.
| leghifla wrote:
| You are missing the experience of being tied to a wheelchair
| for a complete day.
|
| None of the chairs you have shown are suitable for daily use.
| Even the "Magnesium" one.
|
| One of the most important point (beside being the right size)
| is to be able to move the center of the rear wheels just behind
| the center of gravity. Too far rear and you have very good
| stability (hospital chairs), but you need to use most of your
| strength just to be able to turn (and you take a lot of space
| for turning). Too far ahead and it becomes dangerous. So it
| must be adjustable. In theory this should be possible on a
| cheap wheelchair, but I have never seen it. Probably the weight
| ditribution is too different (most is on the rear wheel) that
| the chassis must be thought differently?
| tpmoney wrote:
| The 3 things you're missing are:
|
| 1) How uncomfortable lower end chairs can be for their users
|
| 2) How many of the little design decisions in lower end chairs
| can add up to a lot of pain
|
| 3) The chairs you buy online are almost exclusively all made in
| China using Chinese labor and pricing, where as the one in the
| linked article is made in the US paying US wages
|
| But I want to talk about 1 and 2 for a moment. My spouse has
| developed a need for a wheel chair from time to time, so we
| originally bought a cheap one, just like many of the ones
| listed there. Specifically we bought one of these Drive chairs
| for about $140 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008KMKVEK/).
|
| Among the small "papercuts" of using this thing:
|
| * It was extremely uncomfortable after an hour or so. Bringing
| extra cushions and padding was a must
|
| * The bearings were pretty awful and there was quite a bit of
| rolling resistance
|
| * After enough times being transported folded up in a trunk,
| the plastic wheels deformed enough that one side rubbed on the
| frame every rotation. Not enough to make it unusable, but
| enough to add even more rolling resistance, in addition to
| requiring constant adjustments to keep going straight
|
| * Misc bolts and pieces on the frame would catch and lock with
| each other making un-folding or folding the chair unexpectedly
| complex at random times
|
| * 41 lbs is a LOT of extra weight to be rolling around with
| just your arms when you're already trying to roll yourself
| along.
|
| * There was so much slop in the frame, rolling over any uneven
| surfaces was an exercise in frustration at best. Everything
| moved and shifted and your balance was all over as things
| twisted and buckled under any surface that was a completely
| flat linoleum hospital floor. In fact the thing that finally
| did the chair in was a trip to a park where we needed to be
| rolling over the grass and roots and dirt. A twist too far
| going over a rough patch of ground broke some of the pieces
| that hold everything together.
|
| It was a perfectly serviceable chair for an occasional need
| that lasted us about 4 years of light duty use (some of which
| was during COVID, so very light duty in some cases). And when
| we replaced it, we never even considered buying the same one.
| It wasn't worth the money saved. It's hard to really describe,
| but all the little pain points made it so that in many ways the
| chair felt more limiting than the medical condition itself. And
| we were and are extremely fortunate that we're still able to
| decide on a case by case basis whether to use or not use the
| chair. If it was something we had to use every day, all day, I
| would wager by the end of the first month we would have been
| looking for something else, and it might have lasted a whole
| year before breaking.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| You can get a crappy wheelchair for PS100 off ebay. The gap from
| crappy to decent seems very high!
| whoitwas wrote:
| $1000 seems very expensive. But considering it's always being
| used, maybe not terrible.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Mormons get it done!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I find the story of the company inspiring.
|
| As someone that Serves a small, rather shunned demographic, I
| applaud them.
|
| One difference, though, is that I am not competing with moneyed
| interests. They can play dirty.
| wojo1206 wrote:
| We live in IL, US. I just received wheelchair for my 3 year old
| son. We waited for this 9 months. This wheelchair has not any
| electronics or complex parts and, according to EOBs, costed our
| private insurance exactly: $18,212 (yes that is 18K! I just added
| this up and verified) after all deductions and discounts! After
| that, we received follow up call from the company that delivered
| the chair. We expressed our not satisfaction because we seen
| other wheelchairs that looked much more portable and sleek
| comparing to ours. I think the problem was that we were not
| provided with options at all. After which, they stopped
| communicating with us.
| thomasfl wrote:
| Isn't this communism or socialism? I thought US citizens were
| allergic to socialism? That's the only reasonable explanation to
| why USA still has an archaic, super expensive private healthcare?
|
| "To be clear, Not a Wheelchair isn't a nonprofit -- it's
| currently licensed as a benefit company, a newer designation of a
| for-profit company that provides a public service."
| kqr2 wrote:
| https://whirlwindwheelchair.org/
|
| Professor Ralf Hotchkiss used to teach a course at SFSU on how to
| build wheelchairs.
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