alt Hacker NewsWe'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.
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