With the development of wheelchair industry, there are more and more lightweight portable electric wheelchairs on the market, and people are more likely to buy this kind of electric wheelchair. But for most electric wheelchair, not the lighter, the better. As a professional electric wheelchair manufacturer, JBH has our own wheelchair engineers, we will show you why the electric wheelchair is not the lighter, the better.

   Why electric wheelchairs becomes more and more lightweight? We can discuss from 2 aspects : the battery and the materials of frame.

   The battery

   As we all know, the electric wheelchairs were all using the lead-acid batteries at beginning.This kind of battery has a stable performance, but the disadvantage is too heavy, and you can’t bring it to the airplane. Now most electric wheelchairs are using the lithium batteries, they are much lighter, and they can be taken to the airplane, very suitable for people who need travel by airplane.

   The materials of frame

   At the first beginning, the most common material of electric wheelchair is iron and steel.These kind of wheelchairs are cheap, but they are too heavy. The technology of producing steel/iron wheelchair is very mature and we have reduced the weight to the lightest.

   Aluminum alloy is the trending material for lightweight wheelchair. It has the same strength as steel, but much lighter than steel. The aluminum alloy offers high corrosion resistance, and easy to process, so it would be more suitable for electric wheelchair.

   If aluminum alloy wheelchair still can’t meet your requirements, you can buy a carbon fiber wheelchair. This is a kind of high-end wheelchair. As we all know , the carbon fiber is widely used in aerospace, civil engineering, military, motorsports, and other competition sports.It has the characteristics of high strength, friction resistance, fast thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, moisture-proof and water-proof, etc.

   Now, let's go back to our previous question: why the electric wheelchair is not the lighter, the better? The answer is no.

   We have talked about the 2 important factors which may influence the weight of the electric wheelchairs. It is hard to reduce the weight of the battery now, so we can only reduce the weight of the frame if we want a lighter wheelchair. But reduce the weight of the frame means the wheelchair need to be thinner, if the material of the frame is not strong enough, the whole performance of the wheelchair will be reduced, the life span will be influenced either.

   By the way, if the wheelchair is too light, it may lead to the focus of instability, the wheelchair will tip over, it is so dangerous.

   When you buy the electric wheelchair, please remember that there is no cheap high quality lightweight electric wheelchair on the market. If you really want an ultra-light wheelchair, you can take carbon fiber wheelchair into consideration.