Invacare Storm Series electric wheelchair

Conception

Due to a neuromuscular condition, my girlfriend has been in a wheelchair for many years. When I was at the LEGO store in Wijnegem (Belgium) looking for a gift, I thought of buying a minifig sized LEGO wheelchair with a minifig version of her inside.

When I asked at the counter whether the store sold any wheelchairs, they told me they didn't. However, they told me they could help me build one in the store. Eventually I ended up building a model at the store on my own.

As there does seem to be an interest in LEGO wheelchairs, I decided to re-build the model in LEGO Digital Designer and share my design as a LEGO ideas project. I believe this and similar projects are essential for making LEGO more inclusive with respect to people with neuromuscular disorders and others with electric wheelchairs.

The design

Minifig excluded, the set consists of 22 different parts and 44 parts in total.

The wheelchair has two small wheels at the front and two larger wheels at the back. It is 4 bricks wide and 5 to 6 bricks long. It has white lights at the front and red lights at the back. The bottom is gray and robust, with mudguards both at the front and at the back. The top is black and contains elbow rests as well as a control panel.

The design is based on the Invacare Storm 3 electric wheelchair, which is the actual wheelchair my girlfriend uses. Hence, the project is named after that model. To avoid licensing issues, however, it might be better to sell this product under a more generic name.

Special features

Even though it's a pretty small model with a limited number of parts, the LEGO version of the Invacare Storm electric wheelchair has a few special features that matches those of its real life equivalent :

• The angle of the back of the wheelchair is adjustable (allowing the minifig to lay down)
• The angle of the mud guards is adjustable (allowing the back mud guards to be used as breaks)
• The angle of the control panel is adjustable

Commercialization

The set could come in a polybag, with or without a minifig included. That way, one could purchase as many wheelchairs as one wants at reasonable affordable price.

Alternatively, the wheelchair could be sold in a more generic accessibility set together with crutches, other types of wheelchair, service dogs, accessible vehicles, ramps, etc.

This project needs your support

Please, pledge your support, give a comment and spread the word on social media, blogs and anywhere you can think of!  No model can hope to reach 10,000 votes without your help.

THANK YOU! :-)