Meet Whill the e-wheelchair

While everyone’s talking about Tesla and Terra, there are plenty of other teams working on electric vehicles. One such group of innovators is Japan’s Whill, who make an e-wheelchair that promises to be the next big thing in personal mobility.

Whill has created some working prototypes — one of which attaches itself to conventional wheelchairs to transform them into electric powered machines. It’s other prototype, the Type-A, isn’t geared towards those with a serious physical disability, but the startup is marketing it as a personal mobility vehicle for the elderly and people with walking problems, and is now building towards mass producing 50 of the machines. Those will ship in the US market in early 2014, notes the Startup-Dating blog. The team, based in Tokyo and San Francisco, managed to raise US$1-million to get the tech to market.

The machine has a range of 20 kilometres on one charge, which is more than enough for a slow-moving vehicle like this. It can charge in under two hours and weighs in at a hefty 35kg. The concept which takes the robotic part of the vehicle – the bit that looks like a giant Beats Audio headphone set – and attaches it to a conventional non-powered wheelchair could be useful for those with disabilities, although the fact that the device widens the wheelchair could make maneuvering around tight spaces more difficult.

Whill’s co-founders are engineers who previously worked at major Japanese companies such as Nissan, Sony, and Olympus. Having first unveiled drawings of the prototype back in 2011, the team is now a lot closer to mass production with this new funding round.

Check out demo videos for the Whill Type-A and the wheelchair add-on concept:

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This article by Steven Millward originally appeared on Tech in Asia, a Burn Media publishing partner. Additional reporting by Gearburn.