How the Index Works
The Powerchair Index exists for one reason: power wheelchair specifications are published to be marketed, not compared. Weights exclude batteries, ranges assume perfect days, and capacities hide in footnotes. The Index re-reads every chair from its maker's own documents and scores the whole field on one published scale.
The four factors
- Performance — 40%. True lift weight, range, weight capacity and motor power, taken from the manufacturer's manual or specification sheet for that exact model. Where a maker's documents disagree with each other, the heavier weight and the lower range are used.
- Accountability — 25%. The commitments a maker can be held to: warranty schedule (frame and motors first), return period, and a published support phone number and email address. A long warranty is treated as what it is — the maker betting its own money on its engineering.
- Satisfaction — 20%. The chair's own verified buyer ratings in aggregate. Never a brand's reputation, never a sibling model's reviews, never a rating-site score for a different product.
- Value — 15%. The verified specification set against the verified price, within the chair's own division.
Points
Each chair is scored out of 10 in its division and converted to Index Points out of 1,000. A chair may enter several divisions; its Index position uses its best division score, and its division finishes are printed beside its name in the Full Index.
Evidence rules
- The manufacturer's own document for the exact model outranks every other source. Dealer pages and search snippets are leads, never the record.
- A chair whose ranked configuration cannot actually be bought is a replacement candidate, not a standing. Buy links must land on the ranked model.
- Prices are the verified buyable figures at publication. A later price move does not by itself move a chair; movement beyond a wide band triggers a standings review, not a silent edit.
Corrections
Standings are reviewed on a rolling basis. When a maker's documents change, the chair is re-scored from the new documents and the table updated. If we get a figure wrong, we fix the figure and the score it fed — in the open, in the next standings.