Depends what you do with them. And depends on luck. Electronics can just fail.
Do a lot of harsh stuff, cover enough distance daily in wet salty winter conditions, and walk dog off road, programmed it to jump or go on command and drive like you hate it, live in a mountainous area and its easy to destroy any chair in a year. Motors and batteries in 9 months totally ruined. Everything else corrodes and fails. Esp bearings and suspension.
Spend most of the time indoors, or on flat pavements, dont go far, dont use outdoors in winter, lightweight user, yes 10 years is easy. Just batteries about every 5...
Also it depends on perception. And expectation. For example. In 9 months I can easily detect the loss of performance on a set of HIGH QUALITY lead batteries. And it pisses me off. Because it no longer steers well and feels loose and uncontrollable instead of linear and accurate. It will not wheelie on command since it has greater internal resistance. And loses range, esp in winter. So they are replaced. If I then were to give my OLD batteries to a little old lady living in a residential home, she will think they are still perfect five years later! Because she doesent use them hard enough to be able to tell the difference. I hear people saying they have 10 year old batteries that are still good. They are not, but THEY cant tell.
My chair is powerchair made by Sunrise Medical.
After 19 years works very well.
Heres the misconception.
The manufacturer only really makes a frame, which is a bracket to bolt all the other BOUGHT IN bits onto. And possibly a few plastic panels.
They BUY IN from a pool of suppliers, just like all of the rest. of the manufacturers do.
That means they generally
dont make:
1. The wiring or cables/loom. They have them made by the same group of outside suppliers.
2. Wheels. Same.
3. Tyres.
4. Bearings
5. Bolts, nuts, washers, spacers, plastic tube ends, fancy bolt covers etc.
6. Tubes
7. ANY of the electronics, all bought from the same 3 big companies - (so you see PG stuff like R-Net, curtis instruments, Dynamic on every chair from all manufacturers)
8. Motors, they all use the same AMT, Linix, Elecrtrocraft, EMD, and a few others. That includes sensors, gearboxes and brakes freewheel etc.
9. batteries.
10. chargers.
11. Shock absorbers and suspension.
12. Fuses and Breakers.
13. Upholstery is farmed out to the same small group of industry suppliers.
14. SOME do make seating systems. Most are just bought in from a group of suppliers. Such as the companies that make a universal lift/tilt mechanism.
15. Actuators.
16. Limit switches, microswitches etc.
17. lights.
18. relays.
19. many small brackets and fittings bushes, are just bought in catalaog items too.
So if the frame fails. Thats the manufacturers faiult and the chairs make matters. If anything else fails, and it will, then its 90 percent garanteed that its a common part across all the big manufacturers. For E.G. AMT motors are found on Quickie, sunrise, a bunch of german chairs, amysystems, handicare, etc etc. And are equally likely to fail on all those chairs. Just the same as the rest of the motor manufacturers! Likewise, you will find the PG R-net system of electronics on almost every brand of chair. Or as an option. Even obscure ones like bounder. And equally likely to fail on EVERY make of chair.
If a chair has badly managed wiring looms compared to well managed looms that dont fail then thats the manufacturers doing. But most are similar. Or if they put a power module in a stupid place where it easily gets soaked from a wet road thats also a manufacturer issue. But really theres not a lot of reason to prefer one make over another. The actual layout, F M or R drive, seating options, and then the biggie. CONFIGURATION. Options and then personalised configuration. Thats what makes the real difference between chairs.
Permobil for e.g have a reputation of quality. And sure they are nicely finished, and have inovative seating. But that doesent mean more reliable. There are in fact rather a lot of permobil issues with colapsing seating backs, motor failures etc on here. That double the price gets you a nicely finished product with inovative seating. But it is still made up from the same pool of parts as every other chair. Strip em down, all look exactly the same with different metal frames. Also beware of both permobil (one off impossible for the user to program seating setup) and prides controllers that are really curtis instruments rebadged. They have their own OEM programmers under lock and key. Which means YOU cant get one, and so those chair will always steer like a hovercraft and so to me are completely useless.