Segway's Breakdown

Wired Magazine ^ | March 2003 | Gary Rivlin

[PackerBoy]

The Segway has more than just marketing, pricing and battery charging problems to hurdle.

The dork factor is pretty high. I laughed out loud to see Niles Crane tool around on one on Frazier.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

I can think of a number of other conveyances that are: cooler, lighter, cheaper and readily available:

Razor style scooters; bicycles; roller skates; inline skates; Vespa scooters... It's a product for which there is no market. Eleven miles an hour---how silly!

[Ipberg]

You can pick up a golf cart for less than $4,500 and rather than look like a dork, you look like a wealthy professional.

[Blacksheep]

Another example of "romancing the product!" Great ideas are a dime-a-dozen without a customer you are nowhere!

[PackerBoy]

I haven't seen much written about the potential theft factor.

Let's say I am an attorney in private practice whose office is 8 blocks from the courthouse. Just where do I park this so that I know it will be there, and in good condition, after my court appearance? They don't let you take these inside the courthouse (with metal detectors and security up the ying yang these days), and I must have missed seeing the Segway (bike-like) rack outside the building to which I could chain mine.

Kamen might be a technology genius, but he didn't conduct $100 worth of focus groups before launching this turkey. If he had, he would have scrapped his production and marketing plans until he got it to go 25 mph and run for hours on a single charge, and cost about $800. The skate board crowd might have gone for 'em then.

[Nick Danger]

Here's my free advice: go indoors. Ninety per cent of the problems with this thing have to do with distance and the elements. There are plenty of indoor settings where the ability to move at 4x the speed of walking would pay for one of these things fairly quickly.

I've been in factories where it's a ten-minute walk from one end to the other. Somebody mentioned airports as another obvious one. Hospitals are another. Big distribution centers could use these things for stock-pickers. In all those settings, the Segway could be sitting in a charger station when not being used, so the whole battery-life thing goes away, too.

I think he should forget about re-shaping the urban landscape and ask where he can find expensive people walking fair distances indoors.

[js1138]

it seems like the units could be manufactured for a lot less than what would demand the $4500 price. It looks right now like this is doomed.

Too bad, because there are a lot of partially handicapped people who could use this technology for shopping and such.

I suspect the Chinese could make one for $500, and might yet. Someone mentioned mopeds. I suspect the motor technology could be used to power a moped. No a bad thing for short commutes.

[Benrand]

Two things, 5 grand is ridiculous. No one would pony up that kind of money for something so "disposable".

And two, if I were at Cedar Point and some punk kid ran up the back of me on one of those 50 pound contraptions, I'd be going to the hospital and my lawyer.

But Kamen deserves credit for his successes, I hope he isn't looking for government bailouts, I'd be damn disappointed.

[DoughtyOne]

I believe they paid that price because their model was sold as an industrial model.

[Dog Gone]

Somebody mentioned airports as another obvious one.

They forgot to build in overhead luggage compartments in the Segway.

[DoughtyOne]

LOL, probably so.

[justrepublican]

For the cost of the mpls lite rail they could have built a covered sidewalk the full length and bought 200,000 units.

[Tax Government]

This machine has some of the stability problems of a unicycle, which I've ridden for 40 years.

The manufacturer cannot possibly prevent all cases of the forward-falling crash that was reported in this thread. It can avoid most of them, but not enough to make the machine truly safe. The man in this accident was lucky. A forward-falling crash at 12 mph could be fatal. The rider's feet and probably his hands would be caught up in the handlebars; he might take the impact on his head.

[Enlightiator]

Segway. Neat. But its still a scooter, and at $4500, its about at the end of its 11 miles....

[AF68]

The dork factor would definitely appeal to Algore. I wonder if he has a Segway to haul his flabby white ass around the grounds of his faux Whitehouse in Tennessee.

[dark_lord]

This thing just won't hack it in the general streets and sidewalks environment. But. Inside big warehouses. Inside a bunch of factories. There you get real payoff. When it takes 15 minutes to leave the desk to walk to the right place on the shop floor, and then 15 minutes back - thats expensive.

Also - renting in some national parks. And in the Caribbean when you get off the cruise ship and walk around in the hot sun doing tourist shopping - another good place for rentals.

There are specialized areas where these things will pay. If they focus on those areas they will make money. If not - they're go broke and someone else will pay royalties for the patent rights then then they'll do it.

[Rate_Determining_Step]

I saw guy tootleing down the sidewalk here in Seattle. Notice the word I used.

There is a huge way-gay factor at play here. After scrutinizing him for a few minutes - traffic was crawling so, by chance, I kept pace with him for a mile of so - I concluded no matter what you looked like standing or walking, you're gonna look like a queen on one of these.

I do agree with you that Al Gore would look right at home on one.

[Centurion2000]

Actually if he developed a harness so that a parapalegic could stand eye to eye with other people using the seqway instead of legs he could make the best 'wheelchair' on the planet.