I think the Segway just missed the mark. The real game-changing device is the e-bike and we can see its immense popularity. Segway may have only sold 140,000 of their devices over its lifetime, but e-bikes are selling by the tens of millions.
One problem with a Segway is that there isn't great space for it. It's far too fast for sidewalks at 10MPH and it's too slow for bike lanes where cyclists often want to go 15MPH. We don't have space to accommodate them and cities are often unwilling to make even minor changes to their infrastructure, never mind the large changes that would be needed to accommodate Segways throughout cities - and take away space from other modes of transit like cars.
E-bikes piggyback on roads and bike infrastructure that cyclists have been using for a long time. It's often less than ideal infrastructure, but it works. Likewise, bike parking accommodates e-bikes in a way that it might not accommodate a Segway as well.
E-bikes are also a lot cheaper. $1,000 can get you a solid e-bike (RadPower just launched its RadMission 1 today at $999). While many e-bikes are $2,000-$3,000, that's still around a third of the price of a Segway. Walmart has some e-bikes for around $700 which are nothing amazing, but have more speed and range than a Segway.
E-bikes typically have a lot more range than a Segway. While a Segway X2 SE has a range of 12 miles, e-bikes typically start at 25 miles of range for low-end bikes on very high assist levels. My e-bike ($1,500 purchase price) is rated for 50 miles and I can usually get 80+ on eco mode which still offers decent assist.
I think there's definitely utility in mid-speed (10-30 MPH, faster than walking, not quite car speed), battery-powered, lightweight transit devices. I just think that Segway missed the mark with something that was way too expensive, put riders in a riding position they didn't really like, had a control system that didn't seem to connect with people as much as it needed to, and didn't fit in with existing infrastructure enough. We're seeing a huge surge in demand for these type of devices, just not Segways. Heck, Ninebot (who purchased Segway) is selling loads of electric powered razor-style scooters.
I loved the iBOT. When I heard that the creator of the iBOT was making a mobility device, I expected something amazing. The iBOT was a wheelchair that could go up and down stairs and keep someone at a 5-7 foot height. It seemed amazing. Then the Segway was introduced and I thought "how on earth could someone think cities would be reconfigured for this?" It seemed to ignore what we knew about what people liked to ride while being incredibly expensive and generally less useful.
I can use my e-bike for so many things. I can get around my city with little worry about range and I'm usually faster than car traffic. I don't have to worry about range because I have so much extra. If I had a Segway, I'd be moving about at under 10MPH (with traffic signals and such) and I'd be constantly worried about range. 12 miles is a short distance for a round trip. If I travel 6 miles on my e-bike, I have at least 40 miles of range left. If I travel 6 miles on a Segway, I'm down to half my battery - or less if there were hills. I might not have power to get back.
The Segway was just never useful enough and it cost so much. E-bikes, electric kick-scooters, electric long-boards, etc. are all showing that there's a big market for mid-speed mobility tech. There just wasn't a market for Segways.
My electric cargo bike gets across town (with multiple passengers) as fast as driving, always gets the best parking, and can do the Home Depot run. You inspired me to post some photos: https://twitter.com/jchris/status/1275588731353722882?s=21
I’m very greatful for what Segway did for the “micro-mobility” industry.
But personally I think electric scooters are the future rather than e-bikes. They are simpler to maintain and cheaper to produce. I think eventually (in the next 5 years) they will get significantly cheaper as well, owing to improvements in competition, volume, and battery tech - imagine if the current M365 cost only $100 new. They’re fast enough for the bike lane or streets, and they’re small enough that it’s less scary encountering them on a sidewalk. And you can bring them on public transportation more easily.
Even now you can get that M365 for less than $400 (think I paid 350), amortized over a year that’s about $1/day and all you need to do is keep the tires pumped/replaced and charge it. It’s perfect for me for “last mile” to and form public transportation
I remember the prediction the future cities would be designed around the Segway and how we all laughed at this at the time, but now when considering cities where we'd consider moving to, favorable e-scooter laws and infrastructure are near the top of our list.
What's a good ebike? Are the conversion kits any good?
I have a steel frame touring bike that I use to get to work on (a Trek 520 clone) occasionally. It's great but if it was a bit easier I would probably commute by bike more often.
> The Segway was just never useful enough and it cost so much. E-bikes, electric kick-scooters, electric long-boards, etc. are all showing that there's a big market for mid-speed mobility tech. There just wasn't a market for Segways.
Of course it's not like these ideas were just waiting around for the taking when the Segway came out. Battery tech has gotten a lot better in the years since the introduction of the Segway, and a lot more is possible at various price points than it was at the time. It's clear that the Segway doesn't match up well against any of these lower cost devices today, but this class of device wasn't possible at a competitive price point when the Segway was released, either.
It's obviously not competitive now, but I'm not sure there was an alternative / more successful approach available when the Segway was released. The strongest case against the Segway, I suppose, is that "maybe it should have been a really expensive bicycle instead of a really expensive scooter," but I'm not sure it would have done any better. It's fundamentally the "really expensive" part that was always going to be a limiting factor, and there was no way around that.
You can also retro fit your bike. I’d imagine this is a popular option since it’s fairly cheap and you don’t really need the motor all the time. Occasionally you may need some assistance.
>> (10-30 MPH, faster than walking, not quite car speed), battery-powered, lightweight transit devices.
That's car speed. It isn't highway speed, but when an ebike passes me at the dog beach doing 25mph I'm tempted to put a stick through the front spokes. In a car, 30mph in a school zone would get you a massive ticket ($$$+). Any vehicle capable of such things should be limited to the roads, plated and licensed like every other electric motorcycle. (Don't bother with the helmets. Darwin can work that one out.)
Sometime around 2012, my parents got me a segway tour in a city I was planning to visit one time. Kind of the dorkiest thing ever. My girlfriend and I grudgingly did it, and it ended up being awesome. Even though you look super dorky, those things are really fun, and they're a great way to get a tour of a lot of city in a short amount of time without a lot of exhaustion. Since you're in a group, you're with a bunch of other dorks and you all look like dorks together, but you're all having fun anyway so you don't care. I was really surprised how quickly they stop and how well they can turn.
I still feel like Segway needs a case study regarding how they were able to garner so much hype before it was announced. I remember the breathless "change the world" articles quite well (from nearly 20 years ago, yikes!). This sentence from the Wikipedia article is, well, humorous: "John Doerr speculated that it would be more important than the Internet".
Was really baffling to me at the time how they had such amazing PR.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I remember the build-up leading to release where they were talking about it literally changing mankind. "Cities will never be the same" and all that. I wish I could find some of the articles - and then when it released it was like... so... a scooter? How is this changing life? What's your plan for rainy days? Oh... we just get sopping wet? Ya, not going to change cities and close down all roads.
Modern transportation in cities is a very hard problem that we're still trying to solve. At some point Segway looked like it might be what we needed since it looked like nothing we had ever tried before. It was small like a bike but you were standing up, it was all electric and super easy to use. It was not really a stretch to imagine that this could be the future of city transportation.
I mean, remember the hyperloop? It solves a different transportation problem, but there are many parallels. When you take the time to think about it you can see that it doesn't really add up, but man if it could it could be amazing.
It was also a time before social media, mass consumer internet, and all the high-tech things we take for granted today. It was a futuristic device that looked and sounded fantastic with no real competition. People were amazed by the balancing tech alone (and there was a similar wheelchair prototype).
Not all their PR was fantastic, in Atlanta they were shown off in the airport and for postal service employees. The trouble was in both cases the pictures were of very obese employees of either organization using them.
I remember back thinking the only market was government, there were references to the ADA in the article as well.
Do you think they had good PR though? I would have much preferred to ride a Segway to work than to bike (sweaty/helmet hair) or take public transit (delayed/crowded) but a Segway is just so... dorky.
Their tech got a lot of PR hype but the actual product didn’t get nearly enough hype to sell it to their potential customers.
A lot of it was because of how vague they were - codename, the idea that cities would be designed for it, etc. I remember that really clearly. There were some vague comments and enthusiasm from trusted tech names. So, before launch, they had everyone desperate to find out what it was.
Well, that's a trick you can pull exactly once. The next time Dean Kamen launches something I'll just ignore it completely until my life intersects with it in a natural way. Consider that burned.
It’s not much different from all the autonomous driving stuff that was going to mean kids today would have a personal robo-chauffeur for the rest of their lives and would never need to get a license.
"Segway" is a brand that has passed through several hands after Dean Kaman sold it a while back.
This sounds to me like the New Hampshire plant is no longer going to manufacture Segway units, rather than the technology being discontinued altogether.
Ninebot of China acquired Segway and uses the IP to defend their self-balancing inventions.
I saw a genuinely brilliant use of a Segway (or similar):
I saw a person with one leg using a Segway. Presumably to make this less tiring, somebody had mounted a post to the place where the feet normally go, and then mounted a bicycle saddle that slides back and forth. I didn't get a close look, and I might have some of the details wrong, but I think this covers the gist of it.
For a person with a mobility impairment that limits the speed or distance they can walk, I can see it being absolutely transformative.
For the rest of us, Raymond Chen overheard a colleague who worded it better than I could hope to:
"I was floored by the engineering achievement of creating a device that combined the speed benefits of walking with the exercise benefits of driving, and for just the cost of a used Honda!"
We had a small fleet (12 of them) at the manufacturing plant I worked at back in 2007.
They were great because staff could save tons of time running back to the production area or warehouse. Maintenance had the models with tool bags on the sides.
They were very expensive to repair, and had lots of quirks that needed firmware updates and such.
We got acquired and the new parent company wouldn’t take the liability, so I had to pallet them up and sell the whole lot on eBay.
The same can be achieved using 3-wheel kick bikes of the type often used in hospitals or bicycles. They're cheaper, they give the staff a bit - but not too much - of a workout, they rarely break down and you never have to update any firmware.
> “We tried analyzing, how come sales cannot go up quickly? One reason, I hate to say, is the quality of it, how durable it is,” Cai says. “I talk to customers riding [an old] unit. It doesn’t look good because it’s been on the road 12 years. It has 100,000 miles on it. But the machine itself runs very well. And so when you try to sell new units [to those customers] . . . unfortunately, it does hurt us.” Over the past three years, sales were flat on Segway PTs, dropping from 5% of Segway/Ninebot’s revenue to a mere 1.5%, Cai says.
Wow, I resent this so much. Does no one aspire to build reliable products anymore?
It feels like modern capitalism revolves around turning every customer into a recurring stream of income. Selling something once to a lot of people doesn’t allow for infinite growth.
I remember back when Dean Kamen managed an epic PR campaign: there were weeks of coverage speculating about what “It” was and how it would transform cities and daily life. At least for those of us on the early web, it was an Apple-scale PR event.
Then it actually launched and everyone had a disappointed “that's it?” I actually would not have predicted that it would take until 2020 to fold.
Totally unrelated I am now 35 and feel completely unfulfilled in life when I look at everything Kamen does. I would love to work at a full time research institute experimenting and innovating.
Really they spawned a huge industry of balance-operated electric scooter...things... The branding was much more accurate than I think even they hoped as they were a segue to more cost effective solutions.
I think it's a pretty good cautionary tale for those looking to follow the Tesla model. Don't target the ultra-high end unless you have enough of a technological and legal moat to fend off the vastly simplified and cost effective competitors.
> The 'revolutionary' impact of the Segway might still come to pass.
The self balancing aspect was what segway bought to the table. There was nothing revolutionary about the battery and motor. They originally even used NIMH batteries.
It was lightweight high performance lithium batteries that pushed the electric alternative transport market.
It's happening right now, they simply make too much sense. Some places are even providing low interest loans to foster their adoption to reduce car traffic (Eg: Nelson, BC).
For places with good weather a decent part of the year, and safe-enough bike lanes (that's the main issue) this seems near-inevitable.
The article tries to blame all sort of things for not selling well, but the real reason is super simple: They were too expensive.
Back when they came out I too was affected by the hype and wanted to get one - until I saw the price and said "never mind".
Drop the price to 1/10 of the amount, to $500, and it would still be expensive, but at least there's something to talk about there. At $5000 it was an easy decision not to get it.
I like buying new tech, and I used to be into fun quirky ways to get around. The Segway was just too expensive without enough benefit. I guess I've never lived close enough to work to consider walking, but that seems to be the main appeal.
Now I've got a friend trying to convince me to buy a OneWheel. I just can't justify $1500 for a weird skateboard when I could literally order an electric car on Alibaba for that much money.
I figure between legs, bikes, cars, trains and planes, we've pretty much got transportation solved. Segway tried to solve what bikes solved a hundred years earlier. But bikes are less expensive, are also really fun, and are great exercise.
This story fascinated me because what I took away from it was millionaires not understanding what the market would buy.
And other millionaires hyped it up, like Steve Jobs/Woz.
When I first heard of the Segway of course it was cool, I'm a massive geek. But I'm not going to spend what was 80000 SEK at the time for a toy I can't even park anywhere.
And the whole purchase of Segway by China where they actually understood what the market wanted and launched e-scooters is the icing on this whole story.
The hoverboards don’t use the same technology, which is what allows them to be so cheap. My understanding is that they effectively replace the electronic feedback control system of the segway with the user’s biological one.
I think the Segway is a dangerous accident waiting to happen. You try to step off holding the handle, it either jumps around like a startled horse, or tries to run away. You can't just put it down - it'll do violent things and endanger those around you.
Bump a curb or a trash can, it goes wild trying to recover, circling violently or spinning a wheel.
[+] [-] mdasen|5 years ago|reply
One problem with a Segway is that there isn't great space for it. It's far too fast for sidewalks at 10MPH and it's too slow for bike lanes where cyclists often want to go 15MPH. We don't have space to accommodate them and cities are often unwilling to make even minor changes to their infrastructure, never mind the large changes that would be needed to accommodate Segways throughout cities - and take away space from other modes of transit like cars.
E-bikes piggyback on roads and bike infrastructure that cyclists have been using for a long time. It's often less than ideal infrastructure, but it works. Likewise, bike parking accommodates e-bikes in a way that it might not accommodate a Segway as well.
E-bikes are also a lot cheaper. $1,000 can get you a solid e-bike (RadPower just launched its RadMission 1 today at $999). While many e-bikes are $2,000-$3,000, that's still around a third of the price of a Segway. Walmart has some e-bikes for around $700 which are nothing amazing, but have more speed and range than a Segway.
E-bikes typically have a lot more range than a Segway. While a Segway X2 SE has a range of 12 miles, e-bikes typically start at 25 miles of range for low-end bikes on very high assist levels. My e-bike ($1,500 purchase price) is rated for 50 miles and I can usually get 80+ on eco mode which still offers decent assist.
I think there's definitely utility in mid-speed (10-30 MPH, faster than walking, not quite car speed), battery-powered, lightweight transit devices. I just think that Segway missed the mark with something that was way too expensive, put riders in a riding position they didn't really like, had a control system that didn't seem to connect with people as much as it needed to, and didn't fit in with existing infrastructure enough. We're seeing a huge surge in demand for these type of devices, just not Segways. Heck, Ninebot (who purchased Segway) is selling loads of electric powered razor-style scooters.
I loved the iBOT. When I heard that the creator of the iBOT was making a mobility device, I expected something amazing. The iBOT was a wheelchair that could go up and down stairs and keep someone at a 5-7 foot height. It seemed amazing. Then the Segway was introduced and I thought "how on earth could someone think cities would be reconfigured for this?" It seemed to ignore what we knew about what people liked to ride while being incredibly expensive and generally less useful.
I can use my e-bike for so many things. I can get around my city with little worry about range and I'm usually faster than car traffic. I don't have to worry about range because I have so much extra. If I had a Segway, I'd be moving about at under 10MPH (with traffic signals and such) and I'd be constantly worried about range. 12 miles is a short distance for a round trip. If I travel 6 miles on my e-bike, I have at least 40 miles of range left. If I travel 6 miles on a Segway, I'm down to half my battery - or less if there were hills. I might not have power to get back.
The Segway was just never useful enough and it cost so much. E-bikes, electric kick-scooters, electric long-boards, etc. are all showing that there's a big market for mid-speed mobility tech. There just wasn't a market for Segways.
[+] [-] jchanimal|5 years ago|reply
The bike is a Packster 80. The new ones since I bought mine have more power. https://www.splendidcycles.com/products/riese-and-muller/rie...
[+] [-] opportune|5 years ago|reply
But personally I think electric scooters are the future rather than e-bikes. They are simpler to maintain and cheaper to produce. I think eventually (in the next 5 years) they will get significantly cheaper as well, owing to improvements in competition, volume, and battery tech - imagine if the current M365 cost only $100 new. They’re fast enough for the bike lane or streets, and they’re small enough that it’s less scary encountering them on a sidewalk. And you can bring them on public transportation more easily.
Even now you can get that M365 for less than $400 (think I paid 350), amortized over a year that’s about $1/day and all you need to do is keep the tires pumped/replaced and charge it. It’s perfect for me for “last mile” to and form public transportation
[+] [-] joenathanone|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hatchnyc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|5 years ago|reply
I have a steel frame touring bike that I use to get to work on (a Trek 520 clone) occasionally. It's great but if it was a bit easier I would probably commute by bike more often.
[+] [-] hammock|5 years ago|reply
E-bike is more likely to replace a car trip.
[+] [-] JeremyNT|5 years ago|reply
Of course it's not like these ideas were just waiting around for the taking when the Segway came out. Battery tech has gotten a lot better in the years since the introduction of the Segway, and a lot more is possible at various price points than it was at the time. It's clear that the Segway doesn't match up well against any of these lower cost devices today, but this class of device wasn't possible at a competitive price point when the Segway was released, either.
It's obviously not competitive now, but I'm not sure there was an alternative / more successful approach available when the Segway was released. The strongest case against the Segway, I suppose, is that "maybe it should have been a really expensive bicycle instead of a really expensive scooter," but I'm not sure it would have done any better. It's fundamentally the "really expensive" part that was always going to be a limiting factor, and there was no way around that.
[+] [-] fortran77|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rorykoehler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2muchcoffeeman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandworm101|5 years ago|reply
That's car speed. It isn't highway speed, but when an ebike passes me at the dog beach doing 25mph I'm tempted to put a stick through the front spokes. In a car, 30mph in a school zone would get you a massive ticket ($$$+). Any vehicle capable of such things should be limited to the roads, plated and licensed like every other electric motorcycle. (Don't bother with the helmets. Darwin can work that one out.)
[+] [-] hoorayimhelping|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|5 years ago|reply
Was really baffling to me at the time how they had such amazing PR.
[+] [-] tw04|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simias|5 years ago|reply
I mean, remember the hyperloop? It solves a different transportation problem, but there are many parallels. When you take the time to think about it you can see that it doesn't really add up, but man if it could it could be amazing.
[+] [-] TylerE|5 years ago|reply
Thouse b-list journalists don't wine and dine themselves.
[+] [-] manigandham|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|5 years ago|reply
A bunch of dotcom royalty were exuberant over it and so the rest of us wanted to at least know what all the fuss was about.
Then I think we saw the price and went back to yearning for a slightly used Aeron chair.
[+] [-] Shivetya|5 years ago|reply
I remember back thinking the only market was government, there were references to the ADA in the article as well.
[+] [-] elliekelly|5 years ago|reply
Their tech got a lot of PR hype but the actual product didn’t get nearly enough hype to sell it to their potential customers.
[+] [-] prawn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icelancer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperbovine|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Judson|5 years ago|reply
The hype was UNREAL.
[+] [-] ntbnt|5 years ago|reply
"Segway" is a brand that has passed through several hands after Dean Kaman sold it a while back.
This sounds to me like the New Hampshire plant is no longer going to manufacture Segway units, rather than the technology being discontinued altogether.
Ninebot of China acquired Segway and uses the IP to defend their self-balancing inventions.
https://time.com/3822962/segway-ninebot-china/
It looks like ninebot still produces the Segway in China, and I don't imagine will stop soon.
https://www.segway.com/professionals
[+] [-] mauvehaus|5 years ago|reply
I saw a person with one leg using a Segway. Presumably to make this less tiring, somebody had mounted a post to the place where the feet normally go, and then mounted a bicycle saddle that slides back and forth. I didn't get a close look, and I might have some of the details wrong, but I think this covers the gist of it.
For a person with a mobility impairment that limits the speed or distance they can walk, I can see it being absolutely transformative.
For the rest of us, Raymond Chen overheard a colleague who worded it better than I could hope to:
"I was floored by the engineering achievement of creating a device that combined the speed benefits of walking with the exercise benefits of driving, and for just the cost of a used Honda!"
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110520-01/?p=10...
[+] [-] melling|5 years ago|reply
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/steve-jobs-and-jeff-bezos-meet...
Sorry, that version of the story is paywalled. Other versions discuss Steve Jobs’ views on the early Segway:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2010/09/27/steve...
https://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-segway-technol...
[+] [-] bluedino|5 years ago|reply
They were great because staff could save tons of time running back to the production area or warehouse. Maintenance had the models with tool bags on the sides.
They were very expensive to repair, and had lots of quirks that needed firmware updates and such.
We got acquired and the new parent company wouldn’t take the liability, so I had to pallet them up and sell the whole lot on eBay.
[+] [-] Yetanfou|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hamandcheese|5 years ago|reply
Wow, I resent this so much. Does no one aspire to build reliable products anymore?
It feels like modern capitalism revolves around turning every customer into a recurring stream of income. Selling something once to a lot of people doesn’t allow for infinite growth.
[+] [-] acdha|5 years ago|reply
Then it actually launched and everyone had a disappointed “that's it?” I actually would not have predicted that it would take until 2020 to fold.
[+] [-] leetrout|5 years ago|reply
It would rise up on two wheels and balance so the rider was eye level with standing people. And it would go up and down stairs. Truly amazing IMO.
https://msu.edu/~luckie/segway/iBOT/iBOT.html
Totally unrelated I am now 35 and feel completely unfulfilled in life when I look at everything Kamen does. I would love to work at a full time research institute experimenting and innovating.
[+] [-] samcheng|5 years ago|reply
It'll just be on conventionally-oriented two-wheeled electric mobility devices: scooters and ebikes.
I hope it happens!
[+] [-] pdelbarba|5 years ago|reply
I think it's a pretty good cautionary tale for those looking to follow the Tesla model. Don't target the ultra-high end unless you have enough of a technological and legal moat to fend off the vastly simplified and cost effective competitors.
[+] [-] teruakohatu|5 years ago|reply
The self balancing aspect was what segway bought to the table. There was nothing revolutionary about the battery and motor. They originally even used NIMH batteries.
It was lightweight high performance lithium batteries that pushed the electric alternative transport market.
[+] [-] switchbak|5 years ago|reply
For places with good weather a decent part of the year, and safe-enough bike lanes (that's the main issue) this seems near-inevitable.
[+] [-] alex_young|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://onewheel.com/
[+] [-] ars|5 years ago|reply
Back when they came out I too was affected by the hype and wanted to get one - until I saw the price and said "never mind".
Drop the price to 1/10 of the amount, to $500, and it would still be expensive, but at least there's something to talk about there. At $5000 it was an easy decision not to get it.
[+] [-] reedwolf|5 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-11416654
[+] [-] ngngngng|5 years ago|reply
Now I've got a friend trying to convince me to buy a OneWheel. I just can't justify $1500 for a weird skateboard when I could literally order an electric car on Alibaba for that much money.
I figure between legs, bikes, cars, trains and planes, we've pretty much got transportation solved. Segway tried to solve what bikes solved a hundred years earlier. But bikes are less expensive, are also really fun, and are great exercise.
[+] [-] INTPenis|5 years ago|reply
And other millionaires hyped it up, like Steve Jobs/Woz.
When I first heard of the Segway of course it was cool, I'm a massive geek. But I'm not going to spend what was 80000 SEK at the time for a toy I can't even park anywhere.
And the whole purchase of Segway by China where they actually understood what the market wanted and launched e-scooters is the icing on this whole story.
Stay grounded.
[+] [-] squarefoot|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l486tKKIifY
[+] [-] rootusrootus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kd5bjo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergeykish|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|5 years ago|reply
Bump a curb or a trash can, it goes wild trying to recover, circling violently or spinning a wheel.
Just google 'Segway fails' and enjoy hours of shocking screwups. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GII7QZy2GHM
It's exhausting to ride, difficult to master, hazardous on sidewalks or city streets. As an insurer, I'd ban it.
So no, it never 'took off'. For good reason.
[+] [-] nailer|5 years ago|reply
Also http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...