Patent ID: 7207588

Claim:
A children's ride-on vehicle adapted to be a leading vehicle of a children's ride-on vehicle assembly having leading and trailing vehicles, the leading vehicle comprising: a leading vehicle body having at least one seat adapted to receive a child; a plurality of wheels rotatably coupled to the leading vehicle body and including at least one driven wheel and at least one steerable wheel; a steering assembly including a steering mechanism adapted to receive steering inputs from a child sitting on the at least one seat and to convey the steering inputs to the at least one steerable wheel; at least a portion of a connection apparatus adapted to selectively couple a trailing vehicle to the leading vehicle for relative movement with the leading vehicle, wherein the connection apparatus is in a coupled configuration when the trailing vehicle is coupled to the leading vehicle and in an uncoupled configuration when the trailing vehicle is not coupled to the leading vehicle; and a drive assembly selectively configured to rotationally drive the at least one driven wheel in a plurality of drive configurations, the drive assembly comprising: a battery-powered motor assembly; at least one user input device adapted to selectively actuate the drive assembly; and a sensor assembly adapted to detect when the connection apparatus is in the coupled configuration, wherein the drive assembly is adapted to restrict driving of the at least one driven wheel to a subset of the plurality of drive configurations when the sensor assembly detects that the connection apparatus is in the coupled configuration, and further wherein the plurality of drive configurations includes at least one drive configuration that is not in the subset of the plurality of drive configurations.