Went down a bit of a rabbit hole and found this industry guide to Taiwanese contract bike manufacturers:http://www.wheelgiant.com.tw/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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
