Before I begin on my latest blog, I would like to, first of all, take
the time to give a shout-out to a few people: First, my dad, who is
the owner of Westside Collision in Lancaster, California. For those
of you who are unfamiliar with the Antelope Valley, Westside
Collision not only does a detailed job on your vehicle's repair, but
the people who own the place, including my own father, Sal, are car
people who know the game even better than Earl Scheib, Maaco or
any other major, auto repair brand. So the next time you have a
scratch on your Tesla or Permobil, make sure to give Westside
Collision a ring!
Second, I would like to take a moment to give a shout-out to Paul
Huizenga, Mike Alexander and the rest of the crew at Power Auto
Media in Murrieta, California. Because without their automotive
know-how, a blog like this one would have never happened in the
first place. So for everything horsepower online, I strongly endorse
Power Auto Media and the webzine titles that they cover!
My third and final shout-out will be going to Permobil, and I'm
happy to say that I and a lot of other disabled people in Los
Angeles are proud owners of Permobil power chairs. For those of
you who are unfamiliar with the brand, Permobil's central, North
American office is in Tennessee, but the company is originally from
Sweden, and for myself, I find their products to be the best in this
market, so make sure to check out Permobil when you can!
With that, the bottom line with any power chair is that all of us are
looking at that market in totally the wrong ways. Why?
Because for the last 40 years, we’ve been saying things like, “Oh,
that’s way too dangerous!” Or even better, “You don’t need to go
that fast in your wheelchair!” I can’t really speak for my
community, but as for myself as a "car person,” I can tell you 100%
for sure, that sometimes you just have to go fast, and as much as a
lot of us in this community would just HATE to admit it, sometimes
you really do just have to put-out as much “horsepower” as
humanly possible!
So, when you take the language of automotive and translate it to
something like a power chair, Permobil or otherwise, you actually
are able to put together sort of a "performance stats" list, and the
following numbers show exactly how these "stats" boil-down:
1/4 throttle=2.4-3.0 MPH
1/2 throttle=4.3-4.7 MPH
Full throttle=5.0-5.1 MPH
So the way that the "power chair equation" breaks-down, is that
each unit should be traveling at variable running speeds, multiplied
by various workloads and variable terrain, but over variable
distances.
That was the hypothesis, but the way that the actual running
dynamic of the Permobil C-300 broke-down was Vrpm * Vwl * Vt /
FD. In other words, the chair ran under variable running speeds
multiplied by variable workloads and over various forms of terrain,
but only over fixed distances.
So if anyone, disabled or not, were to try to make an argument
about why the physically-challenged community is majorly
screwed, then that argument would not boil-down to General
Motors or Chrysler; the hypothesis would have to dial
itself back to the one that we've just established regarding
sustainability!
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