Yosh-e shared wheelchair puller

As part of the range of shared inclusive mobility solutions used for the 2024 Paralympic Games, Toyota co-developed the Yosh-e – a shared electric wheelchair puller that converts a typical mechanical wheelchair into a battery-powered electric mobility device.

Service Provided

The Yosh-e is an electric wheelchair puller that could be borrowed by athletes during the Paralympic games and used to travel throughout the Olympic village. The Yosh-e has a range of 25 kilometres, and, for safety reasons, was limited to a max speed of 8km/h.

Intended Users

The intended users of Yosh-e are people in mechanical wheelchairs, and for the Paralympic games it was specifically athletes with mechanical wheelchairs who wanted electric assistance to travel throughout the Olympic village. Use of the Yosh-e allowed athletes to move throughout the Olympic village without concerns over fatiguing themselves prior to competition.

Benefits

The Yosh-e allows wheelchair users to use shared mobility devices for their trips. Additionally, it allows this in a way which did not require users to use a different wheelchair or transfer to a different device. The use of a bracket allowed the same puller to be safely used on many different wheelchair models.

Service Details

There were 50 units available to use throughout the Paralympic games, and an additional 150 were available for the opening and closing ceremonies. The 50 units available throughout the paralympic games were available 24 hours a day, were locked and unlocked using the KINTO Mobility app, and were picked up and dropped off at designated mobility stations.

Introducing a shared wheelchair puller to people with a range of abilities required ensuring that users mobility levels were sufficient to operate a relatively new type of device, ensuring app functionality on phones from all over the world, installation of the bracket on a wide variety of wheelchairs, and advising would be users on how to operate a device that they were just being exposed to for the first time.

More than 240 brackets for the Yosh-e were outfitted to wheelchairs. Toyota’s two personal shared mobility devices in use during the Paralympic games made more than 9500 trips, totalling over 11,100 km travelled.

Financial Details

The Yosh-e puller was made available at no cost to users.

Simone Scarfi, Micro-Mobility Manager at Toyota Motor Europe and Yosh-e project lead

“Isn’t it unfair that people without mobility impediments have so many options for transportation, while people in need have so few?"

About the Service Providers

Toyota is the world’s largest automotive manufacturer and was the mobility partner of the International Paralympic Committee. The company is aiming to become a mobility company, providing sustainable mobile solutions to all. KINTO is Toyota’s mobility services brand.

Klaxon was the co-developer of the Yosh-e puller. It is an Austrian company founded in 2015 which designs solutions for the everyday mobility of people who, like the co-founders of the company, are wheelchair users.