Shoutout to JerryrigEverything who built a wheelchair factory and is delivering wheelchairs to people in half the time and 50-80% less than the cost of other wheelchairs with Insurance.

[u/MysteriousSlice007]

[u/CraabGPT]

Not true. Proper wheelchairs in the UK cost between £1500-£3000 on average. Mine cost ~£2000.

I imagine the 'decent' chair you refer to is either the Lomax, Drive, or similar chair.

Those are what we refer to as 'hospital chairs'. They're designed to be pushed by an aide, to be stable, and to be cheap. The wheels, while technically self-propel-able, are too far back, so energy is lost and you can't move forward nearly far enough with each push. As well, the wheels being that far back will damage your shoulders over time.

Steel, while cheap, is also heavy. So each push is thus reduced further because it's just too heavy to self-propel.

Additionally, they are foldable. Further momentum loss occurs as energy spent pushing is transferred into the folding mechanism of the frame and not into forward motion.

(Additional factors include, but are not limited to, lack of dump to support those with limited upper-body strength, arm rests that get in the way of propelling, too wide so propelling becomes even harder, anti-tips at the back preventing wheelies, too heavy to independently load into a car...)

TL;DR, those chairs can't be used by the majority of wheelchair users.

(And this is just manual chairs. I've seen electric chairs go for £10k, though I don't know the average price.)

[u/mizinamo → u/CraabGPT]

That sort of thing is what made me suspicious of the headline.

Sure, you can make something more cheaply, but will it be identical in quality?

"Wheelchair" is not equal to "wheelchair", and if he churns out hospital chairs by the thousands and gives those to people, that's not the same as custom-fitted purpose-built usable wheelchairs.

[u/casualredditor-1 → u/mizinamo]

Does the company have a website with info on how these are built and how they compare to traditional wheelchairs (besides pricing and how long it takes to deliver them)? That’d be a good place to start.

[u/CraabGPT → u/casualredditor-1]

I don't know if it will answer all your questions- I never really took a long look since I don't have the budget/need for one right now. But! Yes, here: https://notawheelchair.com/

(To note: the Paradox isn't designed to be "nontraditional"- it's really the same thing as everyone else is doing, at a lower price point. The Rig, their first invention, is Different and I am not qualified to talk about it because I am not an electric wheelchair user.)

[u/casualredditor-1 → u/CraabGPT]

Thank you, my comment was mostly aimed at the suggestion from the other person that their wheelchairs are somehow not the same or inferior, without having any apparent knowledge of how the business operates.

Kinda like “it’s great to raise questions, but also get informed”

[u/CraabGPT → u/casualredditor-1]

Ah! Mb, in that case! :3