Since 2018, Permobil has made it possible for its power wheelchairs to be “connected” — that is, for those wheelchairs to interact more robustly with their owners as well as with wheelchair professionals.

And in a Nov. 4 news announcement, Permobil said it has reached the 10,000 connected power chair mark.

“Our world is connected, and so have Permobil power wheelchairs since 2018,” the manufacturer said. “Ten thousand Permobil wheelchair users worldwide have chosen to activate a live Internet connection to their power chair.”

Permobil’s connected chairs can provide their users with information on battery status, distances traveled, and powered seating usage. The power chairs can also relay information to service technicians to facilitate remote diagnostic activities, in the hopes of reducing power chair downtime.

Peter Jidesjö, Executive VP Services and the global leader of MyPermobil and Fleet Management, said in the news announcement, “At Permobil, the focus is on a wheelchair’s ‘uptime’ – how much time can the person use their chair, rather than simply minimizing the ‘downtime’ of a chair.

“Connected chairs provide service technicians alerts about the wheelchair in near real time, which can be used to prevent technical problems and speed up service maintenance. Reliable and intelligent information provided to the individual users like travel range estimates and battery charge status give an individual more freedom to do what they want in life.”

Connected Permobil chairs include the M3 Corpus, M5 Corpus, F3 Corpus, and F5 Corpus VS models delivered after Dec. 1, 2017, in the United States, and after Jan. 1, 2018, in Canada and Australia.

The MyPermobil app is currently available in Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.