I Have MS and have been using a scooter for quite a few years. The one I have now, like so many, has this as a control/info board or whatever it’s called.
Battery charge is my big bug bear. I need to know how much battery charge I have left while I’m out. If there’s not much, I’ll forgo exploring that interesting alley or whatever until next time I’m down this way with a fuller battery. What my little lights tell me is what? If I’m going up a hill (Devon is made of hills and wind) then it’ll put me in the orange, if not, red zone, but the moment I get onto the tiniest bit of flattish land I’ll see that I actually have a nearly full battery.
I realise that I possibly won’t get home if the entire route is steeply uphill. I can tell that all by myself. What I’d like to know is whether the battery is half full, less than half full or something useful like that. If it’s uphill all the way home, then perhaps I can use my own judgement and experience of my scooter to decide whether half, quarter, 10% full is enough to get me home from wherever I happen to be at the time. Manufacturers seem to insist on telling me stuff I find deeply unhelpful and very very annoying.
For instance, I went out alone on the scooter a couple of days ago to a place I don’t go to on the scooter very often. I took the long way, had a couple of small adventures along the way and thought I should probably go home the sensible way, but forgot and went home a different roundabout route with a few adventures and distractions along the way. When I got home I plugged the scooter in as I knew we would want it fully charged today.
DH said an hour or so ago that while it was plugged in the switch on the wall socket wasn’t on and so was my scooter charged or not. We couldn’t really tell as we have to store it indoors on a fairly steep slope so it tends to show orange lights once it’s been put away and plugged in. When he switched the socket on the light on the charger box was red. I assumed I had failed to charge it up and was an idiot. DH had switched it on, and we decided to leave in an hour and hope it had charged enough for a couple of hours out and about at Sidmouth Folk Fest. I’ve just wandered past the scooter and actually the charger light is now green so it’s finished, done, battery’s full. It COULD have shown me that the battery was at 99% when DH first switched it on…… we would have left on time.
Please scooter makers, please. Your lights tell me nothing significant as they are. Please make them more useful.
MNers, sorry for rant. You don’t have to read it obvs!