Electric wheelchairs for senior care and nursing facilities.

Hold the fleet to one or two configurations

All ten MiniRedone models share the same electrical core: a 16Ah LiFePO4 pack built into the chair, two 350W brushless hub motors, a maximum user weight of 150 kg and a four to six hour charge from empty. A facility that standardises on one or two models therefore keeps chargers, batteries, controllers and most service parts interchangeable across the fleet, which is what a maintenance lead is really asking for when they ask for a simple fleet.

Configuration still has to match the residents and the building. Seating width and back height differ across the range, and the folded height runs from 780 mm on MiniRedone-I-W to 1250 mm on MiniRedone-IV, which decides whether chairs stack in a store room or stand in a corridor. Choosing the model per site and per resident group, then holding to it, is the discipline that makes a fleet maintainable.

Spares and service cover before the first failure

Cover runs for five years on the frame and three years on the controller, battery and motors. That split matters when a facility plans its budget: the parts most likely to need replacement are the ones with the shorter cover, so service planning should assume a controller or battery question inside that window rather than after it.

The range is built so that the seat and the chassis separate for repair, which means a damaged seat frame or a faulty controller does not necessarily take a whole unit out of service. What makes that useful on site is a stocked spares kit: chargers, controllers, cushions, footrests and caster assemblies are the items that keep chairs usable. The spare-parts article below sets out a stocking method; the fault-code article shows how staff can describe a symptom precisely before calling, which shortens the diagnosis.

Handover and daily routines

Folding is one manual action and needs no tools, the brakes are operated by foot, and the chair can be driven from a phone app as well as from the joystick. Those three routines are what a care assistant repeats several times a day, so they belong in the handover rather than in the manual alone. A short session per shift, with the chair in front of the staff rather than a printed sheet, is usually enough for folding and charging; fault reporting is the part that needs a written reference.

Charging is where facilities tend to underestimate demand, because a four to six hour cycle is longer than a shift change. Planning a charging position per unit, rather than a shared socket in a corridor, is covered in the fleet charging article below. We do not estimate how many chairs a given building needs, because that depends on resident numbers, mobility levels and how far residents are actually taken; what we can do is quote the models and the spares against the number you decide.

Read next

The guides behind this page

• Electric Wheelchair Fleets in Care Homes and Nursing Facilities

  Planning a care-home fleet from resident numbers and building layout.

• Electric Wheelchair Fleet Charging Station Guide for B2B Buyers

  Charging positions for a fleet, when a full cycle is longer than a shift.

• Electric Wheelchair Spare Parts Planning Guide for B2B Buyers

  Which spares to stock, and the parts that stop a repair without them.

• Electric Wheelchair Fault Codes: Dealer Diagnostics Guide

  Describing a fault precisely so the diagnosis starts on the phone.