An out-of-warranty battery almost left this paralyzed man’s exoskeleton useless
www.theverge.com
He couldn’t walk using the machine for two months.

"Michael Straight, a former jockey paralyzed from the waist down, was left unable to walk for two months after the company behind his $100,000 exoskeleton refused to fix a battery issue. "

“I called [the company] thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older,”

    • @corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      7•2 months ago

      Imagine what smartphones would look like if they still had to be powered by AAA batteries.

      That’s a false comparison. We have Lithium and NiMH batteries available off the shelf for common things that aren’t phones. The technology is available for a COTS phone battery replacement, as long as it matches a common form-factor.

      And if phones can’t work around a common battery form-factor but yet all look like fucking candy-bars, then I call bullshit.

    • @kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      3•2 months ago

      But people don’t want that.

      Until something goes wrong and they discover (usually too late) that they actually did want that.

        • @kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
          1•2 months ago

          On the other hand, there is a very valid reason why things like batteries are so expensive to replace and why you can’t find replacement batteries for a lot of products a certain amount of time after production ends.

          On the other other hand, there are tons of commonly available industry standard batteries that a manufacturer could choose to use, if they wanted to.