Inclusive Design of Personal Electric Vehicles to protect against COVID-19

COVID-19 disproportionately affects wheelchair users, particularly those who are disabled or live in care homes. As a result of COVID-19, 200,000 residents of care homes and 22,000+ disabled people have died, two-thirds of all deaths from March to May (ONS).

The Coronavirus Act received Royal Assent in March 2020\. It limits statutory care requirements only to where "urgent care needs are met, and defer meeting some other, less acute or pressing needs." In other words, vulnerable people (wheelchair users included) only receive urgent care and activities of daily living are left to the individual.

Wheelchair users need help to be safe against COVID-19\. Centaur can adapt existing plans to meet new needs of vulnerable customers at high risk of aerosol disease transmission.

Centaur's Personal Electric Vehicle (PEV) facilitates dignified, independent living but more importantly can better protect users from disease transmission in four ways;

1. Being height adjustable = due to the nature of aerosol based infection spread the lower you are the higher the risk of contamination and infection in public spaces.
2. Being powered and having enhanced access and egress considerations = less manual handling and transfers results in reduced staff/user proximity and contact.
3. Cleanability = the wheelchair is designed in adherence to DH/Design Council's Design Bugs Out programme and is significantly easier to decontaminate than existing chairs, which are nearly impossible to guarantee have been adequately disinfected.
4. Helping enforce social distancing = through collision avoidance and visual/audible/haptic cues to PEV users and people near the PEV social distancing can be maintained.

After establishing a new paradigm for personal mobility, illustrating market acceptance of social distancing features and scaling production to achieve economies of scale, Centaur will offer lower priced PEVs that are highly desirable for people with mobility needs and want to break social stigma created by 100 year old wheelchair designs.

Centaur's five year plan targets the US and European electric wheelchair market, which represents $2.4B and $1.6B respectively in 2020 and expected to grow 10.5% CAGR

Currently, no wheelchairs in the market offer collision avoidance nor cues for social distancing. This project progresses foundational development of collision avoidance features and provides features specific to COVID-19 social distancing.

Centaur is the only UK company in the race for next generation personal electric vehicles.

These features will be first-to-market and, therefore, offers Centaur "first mover advantage".

Centaur aims to become zero carbon emissions by incorporating:

* New "rugged plastic" materials that are easier to recycle than existing wheelchairs;
* More environmentally friendly batteries;
* Batteries made from recycled materials;
* Centaur maintenance plan provides battery recycling.

The team is world class, led by Ford's former Global Design Chief and the UK's newly established Design Age Institute Director, Colum Lowe.