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Comment by zeroq | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

$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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not just sitting, pushing yourself. Making a comfy chair is one thing, making one that you can also be mobile in, much harder.

Except the wheelchairs used in hospitals are to push patients short distances across hard flat floors.

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.

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).

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.

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