Okay, so powered wheelchairs. Not exactly the category you expect to see a waitlist for. These things usually move slowly through the market. Therapists get involved, insurance gets involved, months pass, paperwork piles up.
It is still odd to see one build the kind of early momentum you normally see with, say, a folding e-bike or a new espresso machine.
But Strutt’s ev¹ seems to have done exactly that. Pre-orders came in faster than the company expected, which could mean the targets were conservative, or that demand is genuinely there. It is probably a mix of both.
The electric-powered chair itself has a lot of sensors. LiDAR, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, time-of-flight sensors. Strutt calls the setup evSense, and it gives the ev¹ 360-degree awareness.
It also has a four-wheel active-drive system called Quad-Drive, which is meant to keep it steady across different surfaces instead of doing that jittery, awkward floor-fight some cheaper powered chairs can do.
Tony Hong founded Strutt and runs the Singapore company. He claimed about 75% of people who test-drove the ev¹ either bought one or confirmed a pre-order they had already placed. That is the sort of number product teams love to see.
It is also Strutt’s own figure, so it is worth treating it as company guidance rather than an independently verified result.
Strutt is offering the ev¹ at an early-bird promo price of US$5,299 (around RM21,000), a savings of US$2,200 (RM8,587) on its regular price.
Deliveries are expected to start in Q2 2026. First-batch buyers are being labelled Co-Designers, get a certificate, and are supposed to have some input into future over-the-air software updates.
How much influence that really means in practice remains to be seen, but it is a smart way to keep early users engaged.
A bigger issue sits behind all this. The mobility-aid business often talks like function is enough. If it works and gets someone from place to place, job done. Strutt is trying to push against that mindset.
The ev¹ still has to do the practical work first, but it is also meant to feel like something people choose to use, not just something handed to them.
The early pre-order numbers make that idea worth paying attention to. Now comes the difficult bit: building and shipping at the quality early buyers are expecting.
