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Once you’ve purchased the right wheelchair, it’s vital that you use it to its best level of support. Maintaining good posture is one of the most important things to remember to get the most out of your wheelchair — particularly for those who may be sat for many hours in a day.

Manual wheelchair users are often advised to maintain good posture and push on the rims of their wheels in order to make sure they’re applying the right amount of energy when operating their chair. Electric wheelchairs may be operated differently, but the principle remains the same. Your electric wheelchair should always be adjusted to suit your individual needs and to ensure as much comfort and support as possible.

With many ways of transporting or travelling in your electric wheelchair in a vehicle there can be many considerations to take. From hoist capacities, to crash test requirements and seat to floor heights, there are some fundamental requirements depending on how you and your chair will be transported.

One of the key elements to making sure your electric wheelchair will perform as you need it to do is to make sure that the batteries are correctly maintained. However, this can be a little confusing as most electric wheelchair batteries are now ‘gel’ batteries and are described as ‘maintenance free’!!

In essence, they are indeed maintenance free and only need a good and regular recharging process to make sure they will last as long as possible before needing to be replaced.

With lots of options and accessories available on electric wheelchairs it inevitably means that there are a number of things that can either wear out or potentially have a fault during the lifetime of the chair.

For the majority of failures an engineer visit with replacement parts is a simple process to getting your chair up and running again. However, some issues, especially if they involve some of the powered components, can take a bit more investigating to get to the route of the problem. Thankfully most modern day joystick and powered components have built in fault alerts and can be diagnosed through software based on a PC or handheld device.

With so much choice available in the market, looking at the price of an electric wheelchair may be crucial to helping you decide on your final purchase. However, there are often so many variables that it is not always immediately clear  why some chairs cost a certain amount, and why prices can differ so widely between various electric wheelchair models and brands.

There are five main things to take into account when you are looking for the price of an electric wheelchair, which can give you insight into why the price range can be as low as under £1000 and as high as £30,000. Keeping price factors in mind will also help you assess which wheelchair is right for your needs and budget.

One fundamental choice, which in our opinion should always be the first, is which chassis type will best serve what you need for your electric wheelchair to perform to it’s best in the environment and surrounds that you will be using it in the most.

Mid, rear or front wheel drive chairs will all offer different benefits and compromises, and we cover some of these below.

When you are looking to choose a new electric wheelchair the amount of choice and information available can often be daunting. Even as a starting point some may refer to an electric wheelchair as a powered wheelchair (often shortened to powerchair) or even as a motorised wheelchair.