Electric wheelchair vs Electric Scooter

You might want to go search the web for wheelchair lifts for mini vans. Even it you get a scooter you are still going to have to get it into the van. An electric ramp might even work depending on your mobility.

Good luck

When I was trying to decide between the two, the salesperson talked about the ease of portability with the scooter but also pointed out that it is longer and more unwieldy for household use and doesn’t turn as well as a chair. With a scooter, you have handlebars and a wheel sticking out in front of you and it’s not easy to lean over it to get things out of the fridge or pull up to the table or whatever.

Either way, I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere by myself because I couldn’t load either of them, so I got the chair since it would work better for household use (where I would be most of the time).

The store lent us some metal folding ramps to “drive” the chair right up into the back of our SUV and that worked great!

Decisions, decisions, eh? Hope this helps some ….. 🙂

My opinion, keep the chair also. You never know when you will need it again, and they aren’t easy to get, as you may have found out. Use the scooter for traveling purposes-like shopping ect. Take care.

Hello,
I just wanted to say “boy do I understand”. I bought a power wheelchair and I thought it would be such a great idea. I thought I’d be able to go out and do food shopping by myself or shop at the mall, but then reality struck. I realized how limited I’d be. Yes, my area does offer very low cost disabled transportation, but I have to be able to carry whatever I buy, the baskets or carts that go with the chairs, are small, very limited. I have no friend or family member who will take me out because they are HEAVY and have to be dis-assembled and then re-assembled. I thought I’d be able to go on a vacation by myself in a power chair, but then I realized I can’t assemble the chair by myself and if I was on a vacation that had shore excursions or bus trips, I’d need both power and manual. I have a small Pride Go Chair, but even that weighs alot. I was going to sell it on ebay, but there are so many for sale, I’d be lucky if I got $100. I now call it my “red elephant” because it’s red.

My advice, sell your electric wheelchair ONLY if you get a good price and don’t buy a scooter unless you can try it out first or unless you can return if it doesn’t work for you.

I gave this thread some thought and this is what I come up with. Not much but might start everyone thinking! As far as comfort and to be used for a longer period of time why traveling or shopping the feet can be put into different heights for comfort and also the back of some chairs they recline. the Scooters are not made for longer periods of time and are not as adjustable. Just a thought….not sure about the lenght of the batteries and the cost of the batteries if they would have to be replaced. There are also more attachments made for the wheel chairs than the scooters. Hard when you don’t know a person personally. Also stores do provide handicapped assistance and will get a wheel chair out of your car. Atleast they do around here. Take care! Take your time making up your mind!

Hello again,
I just wanted to add a little more. I looked at both the scooter and the small electric wheelchair that Pride has (Drive also makes the smaller power chairs) and I decided I didn’t want the scooter, they don’t look very sturdy and what OneBirdie said about the scooters is true. I could see that you’d have to come in sideways to reach for something and you’d have to pull a scooter in sideways to sit at a table.

In your post, did you mean an electric wheelchair or a power chair? Because there is a difference. An electric wheelchair looks just like a wheelchair but has batteries underneath to make it mobile on its own. But a power chair looks more like a padded chair with a colorful bottom. The reason I ask is that I have had a power chair, a Jazzy 1113 for over 5 years now. At my worst (for almost 3 years) I had to use it all of the time. Now I mostly walk, but it sure comes in handy when I need to give my legs a break.

It is easy to transport as we have a power lift in the back of our minivan. I think it cost around $2500 new. I can ride the chair to my van & easily put it in by myself if I want to, as well as take it out. But I can stand & lean on the van when I do this. It just takes me a minute. Myself, I prefer the power chair to a scooter because I can also use it easily around the house to do chores if my legs get tired.

Regarding a wheelchair,
I purchased a lift mad by Hameyer lifts in Florida. It is made so that you can load your chair onto it and hit a button and it picks it up in puts it in the back of our van. You have to take the back seats out and it anchors to the seat mounts. It works good and will lift about 300lbs which with handle an over size chair such as mine. It cost about $2000.00 and the company I ordered it from shipped it free.
If you would like more information contact me by e-mail [email]larthur@valornet.com[/email]
Lea

[U]AJR[/U]: What type of vehicle do you have now? Depending on the cabin height, you might not have to spend a ton installing a lift [B]IF[/B] you also have someone to help you load it. (I never did find a way to be able to go somewhere by myself….)

Like I said before, we used metal ramps to just drive the electric chair up into the back of our SUV. However, I neglected to mention that [B]I[/B] was not IN the chair at the time! 😉 The cabin height only accommodated the height of the chair itself and there’s no way I could have driven it up in there myself while sitting in it.

My husband would just get the chair positioned, then hit the “joystick” and it would propel itself forward into the back of the truck. Of course, you also have to have the room to store the folding metal ramps. :rolleyes:

Other than the manipulations of getting it in the truck, the chair was very very simple to use around the house – especially if we took the feet rests off because they tend to stick out a bit. It pulled right up to the table, negotiated corners easily, and zoomed over our deep pile carpet with no trouble! :p

One other thing to consider, however, is that most chairs are too wide to go through most household’s bathroom doors. I had a child-sized chair and even that tiny chair wouldn’t go through either bathroom door. I had to keep my walker inside the bathroom and switch off from chair to walker at the doorway. A scooter would probably be skinny enough to get through but it’d probably also be unwieldy to get out.

If you can stand at all though, even for short periods of time, the chair would probably be a lot more convenient for home use. Heck, even when we were outside, I found that the chair handled tall grass, gravel, and uneven ground quite well.

🙂