Alber e-fix power add on review by reader and user Matthew J. Russel, P.E.

This review is dedicated to a discussion of the Alber e•fix Power Conversion System, its good and its bad points.

I have owned one since July, 2003. Since I am a Professional Mechanical Engineer, unfortunately retired early because of a T6 spinal cord injury in 1991, I bring some expertise and experience to the table, and some analytical abilities to evaluate what is right, what few things are wrong, and what could be done to further improve the Alber e•fix system.

I lived in a wheel chair for nine years under manual power until my shoulders began to give out, and three years in a power chair—my original manual lightweight chair to which I added a modified and re-engineered Damaco friction drive unit. That chair served me well, but needed upgrading, and after a long search and several demo rides on a variety of power chairs, I settled on the Alber e•fix Power Conversion System on a rigid frame Titanium chair made by TI Lite.

Alber does not supply the wheelchair, only the power conversion system, but you can order the entire package through your health care provider.
I welcome prospective buyers and current owners to study this review thoroughly before going ahead with plans, as there are a few surprises to contend with in picking any power chair. If I had to do it all over again, I would still choose the Alber e•fix Power Conversion System, despite its few problems.

Alber also makes another system called e•motion. It does not convert a manual wheelchair to a power chair, but to a power-assisted chair. It, too, has motors in the hubs, but the hubs also carry the batteries. Together they provide assistance in moving, not total power drive. It has no joystick or controller, and the motors are summoned to operate only by forces on the hand rims. The rims sense your intended direction of motion and engage the motors appropriately to help provide the required energy. This review will not discuss that system except to say that it is another option you have in getting mechanical aid in moving your chair. Note, however, that the e•motion system is not convertible to an e•fix system, and that health care providers are disinclined to help acquire such expensive devices more than once every ten years or so, so your first choice may be your last and you had better get it right.

FIRST THE GOOD THINGS::

1. The Alber e•fix system is probably the best wheel chair power conversion system around. In fact, when added to your existing manual chair, or when ordered with a new manual chair frame, it creates what I believe is probably the best power chair available. It is a modern, well thought out design that converts a manual chair to power drive, one of the few such systems available around the world. It adds only about 55 pounds to the total weight, so lifting the chair into a minivan with a Bruno Scooter Lift II is easy. If you don’t have a lift, but you do have an attendant, the main wheels can be easily removed (17.5 pounds each), the battery can be removed (another 20 pounds), and your chair can be stowed without having to lift the whole thing all at once. The joystick (1 pound) also slips off and unplugs easily when you want it to, but stays firmly in place while in use. My chair is a rigid frame TI Lite TR model weighing less than 20 pounds, so the total comes to about 80. Other power chairs may weigh 200 pounds or more. Alber’s efficient brushless DC motors are in the wheel hubs. The system consists of two wheels, two adapter plates, a battery, a joystick controller and a wiring harness. The battery is carried in a Nylon pouch slung under the seat with Velcro straps. You don’t have to drill any holes in your frame. The main wheels engage with conventional quick release axles into the adapter plates, which bolt easily to your chair frame. The adapter plates also carry the electrical connectors for the motors. The joystick pod, which contains most of the electronics, mounts wherever you want it—on the left or the right, low down on the frame, or up higher on the armrest. There is another small electronics package fastened to the top of the battery pack, but it only handles power distribution and houses fuses and a socket for the charger. A simple pre-assembled wiring harness connects the components together. With proper tools and craftsman skills, you could probably install the system in a couple of hours. Most users will have the system installed by Frank Mobility Systems, Inc, in Oakdale, Pennsylvania, since they are the exclusive U.S. distributor. (frankmobility.com) They work with your local supplier and ship the finally assembled chair to you direct, having received your present manual chair frame from you or from whichever manufacturer you choose. It may be difficult to get your health insurance provider and Medicare to approve just the Alber e•fix system by itself to add to your existing manual chair. They will, however, probably approve a power chair comprised of a new manual chair with the Alber e•fix system factory-assembled to it. Go figure. They don’t like do-it-yourself projects. Purchasing with cash requires some contemplation, as the system is a bit pricey, though comparable to other forms of power chairs. Power scooters are less expensive, but are not exactly what a paraplegic needs, and can be, in my opinion, very clumsy in the house.

2. You may disengage the e•fix motors if your battery runs down on a shopping trip. You only have to turn the wheel hubs slightly and then you can propel the chair manually with its standard hand rims. It is a bit tougher than moving a conventional manual chair, simply because of the added weight, but it isn’t too bad. No other power chair can do that. Power chairs with small rear drive wheels, or the popular scooter type chairs—mid wheel, front, or rear wheel drive—cannot be operated manually by the user.

3. The Alber e•fix system will go in all kinds of weather. There are friction drive power conversion systems that apply motorized friction drive wheels directly to the wheels or tires, e.g.: Damaco (no longer in business) and others that apply friction drive wheels against the rims or tires of the main wheels, but these all suffer from the problem of wet roads and sidewalks. Moisture on the friction drivers greatly reduces the friction force applied to the wheels and, generally, all drive power is lost. Not so with the Alber e•fix system. Since the motors are in the wheel hubs, they are not affected by the condition of the streets. Your tires may slip on ice or snow or wet autumn leaves, but most of the time you will be able to move on.

4. Your chair becomes a little wider than before, since the motor hubs are rather thick. That can be good or bad. Wider wheel spacing provides more stability, but it also forces you to refine your driving technique and improve your precision going through narrow passageways. The hand rims are spaced out so they act as protective bumpers for the motors, which is good, considering the cost of the motors. My chair was ordered with a frame one inch narrower than before, but I still gained about one inch in width over my previous chair, making my new chair 27 inches wide. If you have doors or other passageways that are tight, you should investigate thoroughly before placing an order else you may be trapped inside your own home..

5. The Alber e•fix system is ultra quiet. There is just a tiny bit of regimented hum from internal gear noise, but it is quiet enough that you won’t wake your companion when you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Worse than that is the clicking noise as the brakes engage or disengage, but even that can be minimized through programming. The same advantage goes for being in a restaurant or a theatre. It does have a beeper to announce such things as “ Step aside, please” or “batteries low!” or “Your left wheel is disengaged!” but you can kill that annoying pinging through programming. The tires are identical to those you would use on a manual chair, which limits your ability to travel in grass or soft sand or gravel, but you may be able to find a way to put on special wider tires for that.

6. Self-Diagnosis is included. The Liquid Crystal Display in the joy stick pod will indicate if your battery is getting low or should be recharged, or if you forgot to reengage the wheel hubs after moving the chair manually. It does this through a series of numerical codes, which you will learn quickly, and by an annoying beep, unless you have disabled the audio signal. It also goes through a self-diagnosis check every time you turn the system on, but this also causes only a slight (about three seconds) delay in getting started.

7. The controller is programmable by the user. It is self contained in the joystick pod and can adjust settings for accelerations, maximum forward and reverse speeds, delays in setting the parking brakes, delays in automatic system shut off, and acoustic shut off. There is no need to plug in an external programming module.
8. If needed, the wheels can be removed and conventional manual wheels inserted. The axles are the same.

NOW, THE BAD POINTS:

1. There are TWO Alber e•fix systems, first called the E-19 and the E–20. These were replaced in 2006 with updated versions E25 and E26. The only difference is that the E-20 and E26 have a button on the joystick pod that selects “Indoor Mode” or “Outdoor Mode”, and a horn button (!). The E-26 allows you to establish two different sets of parameters, one for slow careful driving indoors, and the other for faster driving outdoors and on shopping trips. Alber also says that in the indoor mode, the inner wheel slows down in a turn, and in the outdoor mode, the outside wheel speeds up in a turn. That difference is subtle, and the price difference is large enough that some people will simply concede and get the E–25, which functions in the outdoor mode all the time. The E 26 system has somewhat more powerful motors and should be chosen if you weigh more than average.

2. The controller has idiosyncrasies. Alber engineers designed and programmed the computer inside the attractive joystick pod, so you can’t compare it with the Pilot or Penny & Giles controllers that are found on most every other kind of power chair. In the original pre-2004 controller, moving forward or rearward could be done only after a delay of about one second. No one has been able to explain to me why this delay was built in, but it was there, and you had to learn to live with it. The delay caused you to over control unless you were very patient. Consequently, it was a potential danger to one’s good health, as you would crash into things when you first got your chair. More about that later in sections 7 and 9. In 2003 Alber tested a prototype of a design improvement that totally eliminated the forward and rearward delays. I was sent one for test and use, in November, 2003 and I filed my engineering report with them. The new joystick pod was introduced in December 2003 and all systems since then have used the dew design. If you already own an early pre-2004 version of the Alber E•fix E19 or E 20 system, you should contact Alber or your local supplier and ask for the latest design of the joystick pod.

3. Programming the controller takes some trial and error, but it is easy since the backlit liquid crystal display on the pod shows you exactly what you are doing (the backlight normally go out after 30 seconds, but stays on continuously in the programming mode). Move the joystick left and right to select the parameter, and forward and backward to increase or decrease the value of the parameter. Controllers used with other power chairs have a separate box with a display and buttons that you have to plug in, but Alber put the programmer into the joystick pod so it is always with you. Knowing how to set the various parameters is not completely intuitive, and you should refer to the manual as you do it. A magnetic key lets you engage the programming mode.

4. The speed knob is somewhat strange. The speed knob limits the top speed. I normally set my speed knob to mid range, and program my Forward Speed for 40%. This gives me some reserve on the Speed Knob for those times when I go shopping and want to go a bit faster up and down the aisles. At home, however, the high speed is too dangerous for me and I turn down the Speed Knob to mid range for normal movement, and to low for use in the bathroom where the clearance is tight and the result of collisions is bodily injury. At low speed settings, the travel can be so slow that you get bored waiting for the chair to get you where you are going. At high-speed settings of speed knob and programming value, the joystick is more sensitive to movement, and your travel can be less smooth unless you are practiced in the use of the high-speed settings. You can’t change the setting of the speed knob while you are moving, but have to stop, reset the knob and restart.

5. Joystick Throw is programmable, but I see no reason to set it to less than 100% unless your disability causes you to lack range of motion of your fingers. Incidentally, as with all joysticks, it is better to stabilize the position of your hand by letting one or more fingers touch the body of the pod and letting the joystick be moved by finger and thumb movement alone. If you do not establish the connection to the pod, you will be subject to reaction forces that cause the arm, hand, and fingers to move and lose their reference (Newton’s first law: a body at rest tends to stay at rest unless…). If you move forward abruptly, your hand and arm will tend to stay where they were, which results in pulling back on the stick, altering your response to go forward. All power chairs have this same problem. Alber supplies a cushioned wrist rest, but you may find it more trouble than it is worth. The body of the pod is large enough for you to find that stable position. A number of joystick knob styles are available.

6. Turning Speed, and Turning Acceleration parameters were included by the controller designers. Turning operates in combination with forward and reverse speed. When not moving forward or backward, it functions to cause the chair to rotate about the center of the main axle. It does this by putting opposing signals to the motors, so one goes forward and the other goes backwards. This is OK if you want to turn on a dime, but they could have accomplished the same thing without this parameter. Having it there makes you program Turning Speed to cooperate with what you have set as Forward and Reverse speeds. Once you get this right, you will be pleased with the ultra smooth transition between going forward, turning, and going backward. Alber provides guidelines for programming and default settings, but you may want to modify these to suit your driving style

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7. Dynamic Braking was included, according to Alber, to comply with European safety standards. It prevents the chair from coasting on its own and it is more effective than conventional hand brakes on a manual chair. Normal American ADA ramp slopes of 1 in 12 are not steep enough for the chair to coast down by itself unless you weigh an enormous amount. Sitting in the chair, before the locking brakes go on (you can program immediate, or delayed by 30 seconds),

I have not been able to overpower the dynamic braking by trying to move my chair manually. The motors act as motors when you are applying voltage with the joystick, commanding the chair to move. They also act as generators when the chair is moving down hill by itself. If you weigh enough, the chair will try to coast down on its own, and you should then hold the joystick either in the neutral position, or even slightly backwards to control the rate of descent. This prevents you from going too fast, and in doing so actually turns the motors into generators. They get rid of their created electrical energy by charging the batteries somewhat. That is of very little practical value. In fact, Alber cautions against going down long hills when your batteries are fully charged, as the motors may then overheat! Recharging comes into play only on steep hills, not on the ones we find in normal shopping trips. (For you techies, the resultant down hill generator charging is not current limited as it is in a normal battery charger, so you could possibly damage the motors or the battery by overheating.) I can’t imagine anyone intentionally wanting to go down such a long steep hill without some help. Your center of gravity moves forward, and you tend to fall forward out of the chair, a really scary predicament.

Most of your driving will be done on the straight and level. The floors of your house or apartment are all level. Most sidewalks are level. Grocery and department stores are level. Going from one of these places to another sometimes requires going up or down hill, but the time spent going down hill is very small compared to the time you spend on the level. Perhaps the streets and sidewalks of Europe have more hills than ours in the U.S.A. I recall that when I spent a couple of years in Southern Germany in the early 50’s fighting the cold war, I walked a lot while on weekend leaves, and the little town I was in did have some rather steep and bumpy hills. Munich, however, seemed pretty flat to me wherever I walked or rode their double-jointed streetcars.
The down side of dynamic braking is that when you approach an object —such as a kitchen counter, your bed, your toilet, your walls, door frames, or whatever other piece of furniture or precarious grocery store display that is in or near your path—if you do not stop before you get there, that is if you actually come into even the slightest contact with the object, dynamic braking will see to it that you continue to stay in contact, and with considerable pressure, against that object.

You cannot bounce gently back and relieve the pain and spasms and other damage that might occur. The only way out is to go into reverse. Turning off the power is not an option, as it might ordinarily be, since when the power goes off, the mechanical brakes go on immediately, locking you in that forced-forward position, and your painful contact continues. This situation also happens in the reverse direction. The mechanical brakes take over when the system is turned off, by releasing a solenoid that allows a pawl to be forced into an internal gear. It is noisy, but secure.

8. The built in delay caused by your inability to program the acceleration to shorten the ramp-up time was by far the worst problem with the first Alber e•fix controllers (Before December, 2003). This resulted in over controlling, and then sudden velocity changes. There was no sensory feedback from the system, and the common reaction was to say to yourself, “I wanted to go forward, but I pushed the stick and nothing happened, so I must not have pushed it far enough, so I will push it some more, and oops! I guess I did push it far enough after all, and now I’m moving faster than I wanted to, so I will pull the stick back, but nothing happens, so I must not have pulled it back far enough so I will pull it back some more, and oops! Now I am going backward too fast, so I am confused.” (And mad, and I feel as if the walls are attacking me.) I probed Alber for a solution to this one and they eventually sent me what they called an engineering prototype controller. It worked fine with zero delays! Very soon after that, they introduced the new controller design into production and all systems now have immediate response.

9. Reaction torque is a new problem not usually associated with power chairs because they are all so heavy and low slung. When the drive motors try to rotate the wheels to move you forward, the reaction torque tries to rotate the chair frame to tip you backward. There is no way out of this Newton’s third law problem. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In our case, this can cause you to tip backwards, sometimes with dangerous complications.

You won’t notice this on the straight and level, but as soon as you try to climb over even a small threshold you will be introduced to this menacing phenomenon. My first encounter with reaction torque was in going out of my house through the front door, which had a threshold plate about one half inch high to prevent rain and snow from coming in under the door. A good design for the door, but a difficulty for a motor driven wheelchair.

When you meet an obstruction the motors have to grunt a bit to call for more power to provide the torque to produce the forward driving force necessary to force (lift) the front of the chair over the bump. There is an electrical feedback loop that tries to maintain the wheel speed selected by the joystick, and the wheels are going to try to get to this speed no matter what. Scaling the bump occurs with a sharp jolt, since the motors can not react quickly enough to know that you have reached the top of the hill and you don’t need all that power to carry you on anymore, and you are suddenly caught with a forward velocity that is hard to cope with.

Along with the sudden velocity change as you break out over the hill, there is also a sudden reaction torque, and your chair may be rotated violently backwards. Hang on to something, or arrange to have someone guard your back to catch you! Don’t try to lean backwards in order to shift the center of gravity so the weight on the front wheels would be lowered to make climbing over obstacles easier. In most wheel chairs, the center of gravity is already as far back as is safe. Leaning backward to further move the c.g. is not wise. You will merely add to the forces that want to tip you backwards.

Leaning forward would help counteract the reaction torque, but it also increases the need for more power to climb over the obstacle, a sort of catch 22. My solution was to add a small ramp on the floor, so I climb over the threshold gradually. (The problem is even worse with small front wheels. If you have a choice, get the largest front wheels that your chair can accommodate.) Also, you may want to put those anti-tip wheels that have always been such a nuisance back on your chair. (Alber makes a set of very good anti-tips that are novel and allow you to go over obstructions that otherwise might have made you hang up on your old anti-tips, which is why you took them off in the first place, but they are not cheap.)

I also moved my battery forward a couple of inches, mostly to help provide a better location for the lifting harness for my Bruno Scooter Lift, but the by product was that it also provided more counterbalance for the reaction torque, but only by increasing the weight carried by the front wheels, making it that much more difficult to scale bumps and thresholds. Counterbalancing is not as simple as it looks, as the weight of the motors is located at the centre of rotation, and does not add to the weight available to counterbalance the reaction torque. Other heavy weight power chairs have the advantage that their small rear drive wheels move the center of rotation much closer to the back of the chair, and the center of gravity is thus further forward of the pivot point, which results in more favourable counterbalancing forces to oppose reaction torque.

Note at this point, that since the system has velocity feedback, climbing a normal ramp of 1 in 12 or steeper is perfectly possible at even the slowest speed setting. The Alber e•fix motors are controlled by constant voltage variable pulse width modulation and, when demanded, more power is achieved by calling for a widening of the pulse width, which is sensed from the joystick position. Other systems may require you to go up hills by moving the joystick to demand more speed and thus more voltage to the motors.

With my former power chair, I sometimes had to get a running start to climb the ramp to my front door. Not so with the e•fix. Note also that the reaction torque problem is greatly increased if you try to cross a threshold or a sidewalk bump at an angle. You will find increased difficult in lifting just one front wheel at a time over the bump, since the bump will cause the wheel to be partially swivelled and the lifting forces can multiply. The reaction torque not only throws you backward, but rotates the chair as well and tries to swing you sideways, such as against the door jam. Double whammy! Sometimes violently! Ouch!

10. Batteries have always had problems, wheelchairs or not. The normal Alber e•fix installation includes a single 24-volt 12 Amp-hour battery in a neat plastic package that fits under the seat. Early versions were available with your choice of a 7, 12, or 17 Amp-hour battery. An optional 22 Amp-hour battery is now available and the 7 Amp-hour one is discontinued. The main difference is in travel distance. We don’t have odometers so it is difficult to define your range requirements, but more seems better than less. I selected the 17 Amp-hour battery and it is adequate for my needs.

The battery should be charged every day else you take the chance of it running down in the middle of a shopping trip. American U-1 batteries are not available as an option. It turns out that you are better off not waiting for the battery to run down before charging it. Battery life is extended if you charge up after using only about 30% of the capacity.

This means that you should charge every night if you have had heavy usage, such as with an outdoor excursion or shopping trip, or at least every other night with just around the house usage. My first set of batteries lasted a year and a half, and I went on a lot shopping trips. The second set of batteries has lasted almost four years so far, probably because I got into the habit of charging every night instead of every other night, and I don’t travel outside as much. A word to the wise and miserly: Charging after a deep discharge takes five to six hours regardless of the amp-hour capacity of the battery since chargers are selected to limit the charging current and that stretches the time in order to not overheat the battery.

That is, if you buy a small battery, you get a small charger that only puts out about one amp charging current. It takes six hours. If you buy a bigger battery, you should buy a bigger charger that puts out three amps, and it will still take six hours. (If you use a small charger, it will take even longer). The U-1’s in my former power chair had a 31 Amp-hour capacity, and my charger put out five amps. It still took six hours. You can’t charge any faster without monitoring the battery temperature and using that to control the charging current.

Batteries and chargers that do that are generally not available to us ordinary people. All these chargers gradually decrease their output as the battery becomes fully charged, and when you finally get the indication that the battery is restored to full charge (the green light on the Alber charger goes on) the charger is delivering almost no current at all. You can leave the charger plugged in and it won’t hurt the battery or the charger.

Fortunately, Alber provided a socket on the power distribution box on top of the battery to plug in the charger. I moved my battery forward about two inches to help balance the chair better for my Scooter Lift II and the by product was that I could now reach the socket while sitting in the chair. I would have preferred to have the charger socket somewhere in the joystick pod, where it would always be easily reachable—even if that made the pod a bit larger. Fumbling for the charger socket underneath your chair can be difficult, and must be done by feel, not by sight. Leaning forward enough to get the plug in place sometimes makes me feel as if I might fall out.

While the charger is working, the rest of the system turns off, I guess to protect the circuitry, or at least to protect you from driving away while the charger is still plugged in. Plugging the charger in while you are sitting on the edge of your bed was not easier for me than while sitting in the chair.

Most of us will prefer to recharge while asleep rather than during the middle of the day, when the charger and cord will interfere with our mobility. Alber now provides an optional remote charger socket mounted up near the joystick pod so it is easier to reach, but mounting it may depend on your chair’s structure.

The charging cord socket on the top of the battery pack has a problem. It uses the typical (cheap) computer type socket that fits on a circuit board with three prongs that ordinarily go through the board and are clinched and soldered in place. Alber’s design inserted a thin plastic part between the socket and the circuit board (part of the structure that carried the power distribution circuitry and fuses), so the prongs don’t go very far through the board and cannot be clinched over to improve rigidity and insure mechanical strength.

I struggled with this for a while, had to buy two new circuit boards to replace broken ones, and finally glued in some surplus plastic pieces I made to forcibly wedge the socket in place so it could not move at all. While doing this plastic surgery, I noticed that Alber, also, has realized the vulnerability of this socket and redesigned the mounting of the socket—alas, not as strong as it could have been, but a step in the right direction. The problem arises because any sidewise force on the charging cord tends to rip the socket out of the board. While swinging my legs on to the bed after transferring from the chair to the bed, they sometimes caught the cord and gave it and the socket a yank. My wedged-and-glued-in-place socket has lasted two years without any problems.

The charger cord is also not robust. The wires once came unsoldered inside the plug, requiring a new cord/plug assembly. Alber’s plug is a 3 mm plug with a 5 mm plastic ring at the end of the tip, in a 5 mm circuit-interrupting socket. The plastic ring touches the internal part in the socket that interrupts the current and disengages the charging of the battery from the rest of the electronics and disables the chair. This means that the chair cannot be moved while the charger is at work. I had to substitute a Radio Shack plain tipped 5 mm plug for a while, and it worked fine but was much harder to grip. It also is advisable to turn the system off before inserting the charger plug.

11. Ergonomically, the joystick pod has a couple of other nuisance problems. The speed knob is on the left, and is susceptible to being moved when you least expect it. If you mount your joystick down low on the frame (where I like it because it does not then interfere with my tray table) the knob rubs against your thigh and is easily jarred. The on-off button on the right of the pod is also unprotected and is easily turned off with the slightest touch. I made a couple of moulded fibreglass guards, painted to match the pod, and stuck on with double back foam tape, and I no longer have any difficulty with these buttons. Alber could just as easily have tucked them in with protective barriers or shrouds to prevent inadvertent operation. If you like your joystick on the left, the problem does not go away, as you will surely change the speed knob setting whenever you bump into things, and your thigh may also accidentally touch the on/off button, stopping you abruptly at inappropriate times.

12. My hand rims are made of stainless steel, which was a bad choice. They leave ugly marks on our walls and doorframes, and although the marks wash off with some scouring powder and a damp sponge, it is a nuisance and does not contribute to domestic tranquillity. Eventually, all that scrubbing will remove all that paint. Anodized or plastic coated rims might have been better, but I do not have any experience with that. The hand rims protect the motors from being bumped, but they also do a number on your household: walls, door mouldings, your furniture, and anything else they come in contact with. By the time the collision is noticed, it is too late, and the dynamic braking guarantees you won’t be able to bounce back.

The worst kind of collision occurs with doors as you go through and catch the hand rim on the door between the hinge and the door jam, and wedge yourself into a jammed-in-place position. (Is that why it is called a door jam?) All you can do is stop, relax, control your temper, and try to slowly back out of the entanglement. It is frustrating, especially when you are in a hurry to get to the bathroom.

On occasion, the collision will dislodge the precise alignment of the connector at each wheel, causing a momentary interruption and a subsequent complete stoppage. It has also happened that in moving I have hit something that rotates the wheel hub, disengaging that motor. Sometimes you can rock the chair back and forth to re-engage the wheel at fault, but other times you must disengage the wheel by rotating the hub, and back out of the situation manually.

13. Power wheelchairs are sold to paraplegics and quadriplegics. From the statistics I have seen, it appears that 80% of all chairs sold are collapsible so an attendant can put them in a car trunk. Most scooters and power chairs (Jazzy, Hoveround, Rascal, etc.) are sold to elderly people who are not paraplegics or quadriplegics, but just have trouble walking, or people who have had problems with heart, lung, back, knees, arthritis, etc., and their doctors gave them a prescription telling their health insurance company to buy them a “power chair.” Evidence of this is found in the advertisements of manufacturers of scooter lifting devices. Most of these lifts are shown being used by an attendant, or for the user of the chair to get out of the chair, hook up the lifting device, press the buttons that tell the crane to lift the chair and swing it into their car trunk and then walk back to the car seat. I have seen only one obscure advertisement for a wheelchair lift picturing it actually being used by a paraplegic who cannot walk (it lifts and swings the chair into the back of an open-to-the-air pick-up truck, hardly an average situation).

Even the Bruno Scooter Lift II, which can deftly lift and stow a chair or scooter through the side door of a minivan, is advertised and pictured as being used not by the wheel chair user, but by some other person who can walk. Not all wheel chair users have attendants to satisfy their every whim. (I also have a Bruno “Turny” power seat in my minivan which rotates, extends, and lowers to a height that matches my wheel chair. I can lower the front passenger seat, transfer to it from my chair, attach the sling, and lift and move the chair into the space behind the front seats. I can then slide over to the driver’s seat on a board, and drive myself.)

Another bit of evidence that shows that most “power chairs” are sold to non-paraplegics is that not one of the makers pays any attention at all to what will happen when the batteries run down, except to provide a tiny and nearly inaccessible lever somewhere underneath to disengage the power drive so you can move the heavy beast by pushing. They assume that every user has a full time attendant who can push, or that the user can stand up and push his or her own chair when the batteries go dead! Most quads will have an attendant who will do this, but TO A PARAPLEGIC, DEAD BATTERIES ARE A DISASTER! I also think that most paraplegics are younger people, most of whom have had an accident in sports or driving, and that they tend to be athletic. Else you would not see so many paraplegics shown that way in magazines, catalogs, and on television.

Depicting a disabled person playing basketball or tennis from a wheelchair sends the message that we all have completely overcome our disabilities and that we thus can get on with our lives in a normal way, so don’t be threatened at the sight of us. Not so. Most of those younger people in wheelchairs will eventually develop shoulder problems, and will face two months or more recovering from rotator cuff surgery while not being able to lift themselves from their chairs to their beds every night because their arm is strapped to their side to immobilize it while the muscles heal.

Their days will be spent being pushed at the convenience of a lazy and underpaid rehab attendant, or else driving themselves in circles with their good arm. I contend that all paraplegics will eventually end up in a power chair because the struggle to move the chair around by arm power eventually becomes their greatest burden. Consequently, I believe that manufacturers should acknowledge that there is a big market for paraplegics, and design sensible equipment for them. We are at the mercy of the manufacturers who provide equipment that is designed mostly for the quadriplegic or the person with a totally disabling disease such as MS or Muscular Dystrophy, requiring special attention to loss of fine finger control, range of motion, etc., but who do not seem to want to make special (better) equipment for the more independent paraplegics.

The patent office is full of patents addressing the special needs of the quadriplegic, but much fewer to the needs of the paraplegic. Notice that the Most power chair makers include special programming parameters for quads, such as joystick throw and axis change. I also suspect that they all limit the range of parameters so as not to incur liability. Bah! Humbug!

14. Finally, after all this rambling and grumbling about problems, I still contend that the Alber e•fix system is probably the best power chair option available. It is somewhat expensive, as is all equipment for the disabled, since most of it is subsidized by health care insurance providers with the prices inflated by the commissions and profits of many layers of distributors and dealers, but still, there is not a better choice for the paraplegic who does not have difficulties with finger motion. You will have to be patient at first, but your skills will gradually improve, and in the end, you will be very satisfied with your new chair, despite its very few shortcomings. I hope this review has given you an insight into the workings of the Alber e•fix system, and has also given you courage in your challenge to purchase a power chair.

15. I urge you to go to Alber’s website for e•fix at :

http://www.alber.de/en/products/efixneu.php

You will find information, illustrations, and videos for each of their wheelchair power systems: E-fix, E-motion, and a couple of lesser three-wheel systems, plus information about options, specifications, and accessories.