Tech Review: Self-Riding Horses. The Future of Mobility or Just Regular Horses with Nobody Sitting on Them?
Will the SRH™ revolutionize the horse industry?
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Imagine mounting thy steed, but instead of giving it all manner of commands in order to make it trot or canter, thou simply utters the name of thy destination and off it goes. For the entire journey — instead of focusing on riding — thy hands and attention couldst be focused on other tasks like polishing thy greaves, writing letters settling affairs of thine estate, or smelling the kerchief bestowed upon thee by a fair damsel at the last joust.
Such is the vision of Horsla Inc. with the introduction of its revolutionary new Self-Riding Horse™. The SRH ist the brainchild of Horsla C.E.Overlord Cleon Rust, whomst claims that autonomous horse technology ist the way of the future for knights errant and knights non-errant alike.
But doth the SRH liveth up to the hype?
Early SRH prototypes seemed to be nothing more than regular horses with nobody sitting on them, which were allowed to randomly graze and gallop wheresoever they pleased. But Rust’s latest model allows a human rider to take to the saddle.
We took an SRH for a spin to find out if it shall truly revolutionize the horse industry, or if it shall crash and burn, or crash and do whatever it is that happens to horses when they crash.
Ye Review
Fuel Economy. Horsla touts the SRH’s fuel economy as one of its defining features. And yet, in our testing, it consumed 1.9 bales of hay per dozen furlongs. That’s only slightly less than the average horse, which consumes two bales per dozen furlongs. What’s worse, it only accepts Premium or Super hay, as Standard will cause it to have awful gas. C-
Handling. Honestly it just feels like a regular horse, which we guess is fine. B
Style. Not only does the SRH handle like a regular horse, it looks like a regular horse, too. The only reason we’re not giving this a lower score is because regular horses look pretty cool. B+
Features. The standard package comes equipped with a jewel-encrusted saddle, horse shoes, and a diminutive squire to brush its teeth and mane. The squire seemed okay at first, but eventually his constant brushing got on our nerves. C-
Safety. Perhaps customers’ number one concern with riderless horse technology hath been safety. Can it handle the reins with the same aplomb as a deftly knight? We found that it struggles in high traffick scenarios, such as when there’s an ox cart or a drove of swine in one’s path. In fact, it slammed on its breaks and threw our test rider helm-over-stirrups into a flock of sheep. Luckily, he was uninjured. ‘Tis unclear if this was because of the horse’s safety features or because the sheep were very fluffy. D
Teeth. The SRH’s teeth might be its most defining feature. The model we reviewed had perfectly formed pearly whites. Although ‘tis possible the squire just brushed them well before our review. A-
Engine. Only one horsepower. Despite recent technological advances, engineers hath not figured out how to put more than that into a horse. C
Pryce Tagge. The Self-Riding Horse™ is not an investment for the mere low-level aristocrat. It cometh with a hefty pryce tagge that shall make any lord who can afford one say, “Goode thing my family controls the shipping lanes throughout the Great Middling Sea and pryce is not an object.” C
Overall Rating
Will the Self-Riding Horse™ revolutionize the horse industry? The answer to that is a solid neigh. Whilst its standard horse functions are acceptable, wethinks it is nowhere near the game-changing technology of other automated products like the Self-Flogging Peasant version 2.0 (SFP-2). C+
