My new mobility scooter was delivered today. It's a bit longer and wider than the one I inherited from Mum. It's also new, not six years old. One thing about the old one that annoys me is the reversing beeper, the new one doesn't have that feature. The old one can work on hills and can haul my weight but it baulks at combining the two actions, the 2-pole 240W motor goes into overheat slowdown and the fix is to reset the overload by turning it off and back on again, as well as giving it a break for five minutes or so.
One particular short hill almost stalls the old device when approached at full noise (11kph). The new machine drops down to 8kph then picks up and is doing 9kph as it reaches the crest. I guess having batteries of 10% greater capacity and a 4-pole 700W motor helps a lot with the performance difference.
One thing about the new one that I initially thought was a bit of a gimmick is the Bluetooth/micro SD card audio player. It's basic, only one tiny speaker facing down from the bottom of the control panel on the steering tiller.
It has forward skip, reverse skip and play/pause buttons. In addition there's a USB-A port for charging small things like phones. The audio quality from the tiny speaker is poor but is loud enough to enjoy the music.
The older scooter uses foam-filled inflatable tyres on wheels 11 inches in diameter as the sole suspension whereas the new one gets coil springs on each wheel plus a short gas strut under the seat. In addition the wheels are 13-inched across.
The older one is still available for sale at a price thats about 20% higher that what I paid for the new one. There's a universal phone holder fitted and I've downloaded an app called Speedler, which displays live speed, maximum speed reached, distance covered, average speed and time. That's quite handy to have.