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Segway HT Starts Selling
Ninja Master Gara writes "The much-hyped "IT", Dean Kamen's Segway Human Transporter, started selling Monday with a no-refund deposit of $495 on the $4,950 people mover for deliveries starting March 2003 on first come first serve basis.
"The Segway Human Transporter is one of the most famous and anticipated product introductions of all time," Jeff Bezos, chief executive and founder of Amazon.com, said in heralding the availability of the vehicles on the online retailer's site." It's also the most overhyped and overpriced toy ever, and I'm kicking myself for posting it since that just contributes to the problem.
Has anybody figured out how it works?
.... I WANT ONE! :)
It will be interesting to see how popular this will become over the next few years (and subsequent price drops). Remember when push-scooters first started to become fashionable? People looked on at the owners, and thought "What a ridiculous concept".... Switch to today, and there are many businessmen using this mode of transport to get around the city (at least in Paris).
Do you think that the same will happen to the Segway?.... Time will tell....
-- 7 string electric violin + live loop samplers
If you've ever been to Italy and seen the way they handle their Vespas, and where they try to drive them knows that "Seven mostly rural states have no prohibitions on the use of powered vehicles on sidewalks." could mean trouble.
Except from that, I think that it is nice to see that this actually became a product (or looks close to becoming). I doubted it earlier.
5 Grand? Buy a car.
I remember, many years ago, there was a similar device. It promised to revolutionise transport in ourt crowded infrastructure. It cost about £400 ($800 or so at the time), could be driven by anyone, was efficient, and affordable.
It was called the Sinclair C5 and it was a complete failure.
The Segway is almost the same, except it has a price tag high large enough to buy a cheap used car, and looks even more stupid.
I think one of the major difficulties for it will be the legal situation - what is it classified as?
I live in the UK. As I understand it, it will be illegal to ride on the road (since it is a powered vehicle) and also illegal to ride on the pavement (sidewalk). Where the heck can I ride it then?
Then there's the problem that you look like a complete goon. But I ride a unicycle so who am I to comment?
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A vehicle that can move you along at about 15 mph without making you sweat while in a suit and tie...or whetever work clothing you are wearing.
So what do you do with this thing when you get to work? Are they going to have a parking lot for them? Ride it into the office? Will the HR department enforce a 2mph speed limit in the hallway? Will part of your pay be the electricity to recharge your unit on the company electric circuit?
(imagine your favorite HR person standing in the hall of your office with a radar gun.) ha.
Don't Tread on Me
Don't like it, don't buy it.
However, do not deny the technology in it is very cool. In fact, the Amazon.com order page has a very nice semi-detailed overview of how everything works, with diagrams, etc.
I can't wait to try one of these one day when they come down in price.
"And like that
I remember reading a while back about how people who were shown IT/Ginger in it's development have basically said Segway is not it. ZDNet has the story.
I was curious why Steve Jobs was getting all excited about something like this, doesn't seem like him.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Yeah, but how much would I have to pay to travel in Tokyo? For the few miles I travel each day I have to pay £20/week.
Actually, thinking about it, this Segway jobbie would only cost me, hrm, four year's public transport money. It *must* be value for money...
I know that there is a wheelchair called the ibot which is made by John Williamson. Part of the attraction is that when the chair is in "standing" mode, the wheelchair bound person is on the same eye level as able bodied people. (is abled bodied people the correct term for people with working legs?) anyway, what would happen if a paralysed person braced their legs straight and then balanced on the platform of a segeway and got that same six foot tall feeling of looking a six foot tall person in the eye for 1/20th the cost of an i-bot wheelchair?
Northern NJ towns are already regretting that hasty cave-in, according to this article. The state law Segway lobbyists pushed through prohibits towns from banning any "electric personal assistive mobility devices,'' says that story--the law " was passed after Segway, maker of the "Human Transporter,'' lobbied New Jersey's Legislature and others throughout the country."
So what's the problem? As a result, New Jersey towns have been unable to deal with the latest fad among local teenagers, electric scooters, which they ride on the sidewalks.
Note that the scooters now terrorizing North Jersey pedestrians are not "assistive devices" that deserve protection by the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)--neither is the Segway. These are vehicles you have to stand up on to drive. But affluent parents who bought these toys for their teens are calling on the protection of the ADA to keep them on the sidewalks and out of traffic. We can expect to see the same with the Segway.
San Francisco plans to fight back, according to this Examiner article. Senior-citizen activists and walkers protested they don't want to share their space with a 95 lb machine traveling 12 mph. "The whole point of sidewalks is to separate vehicles from pedestrians," says Walk San Francisco director Michael Smith.
IMO, the Segway is a pyramid scheme waiting to tumble. Early investors put up the cash for a massive publicity and lobbying campaign. They now have until March to lure unsuspecting buyers to buy their Segways, and unsuspecting investors to buy their stock.
In March it's all over. Once Segways hit the sidewalks, the pyramid crumbles. Whoever has money in Segways in March will take the hits for liability claims that already have class-action lawyers licking their chops. State legislators will quickly rescind Segway laws, and Segway owners will be riding their white elephants in the street--if they feel like admitting they own this year's version of Edsel.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
The Segway has been criticized mercilessly since it was first revealed. I think this is largely the result of the secrecy surround its development. A great deal of speculation ensued about what it could be, and then when it was launched, people felt let down because they had imagined something more.
Where else have I seen this? Oh yeah, it happens before every Macworld Expo. It's some kind of clinical condition that relates to people never being satisfied and the grass always looking greener elsewhere.
Anyway, I think it is pretty stupid to call it overhyped.
Firstly, the rampant speculation was NOT hype. It was speculation. Hype is when you talk about the great features of a product and how much you want one. Anticipation of the next LoTR movie is hype. Speculation about "IT" or "Ginger" was more like wondering about whether aliens exist.
Secondly, I think hype can only really be determined after the product is launched to see if it fails to live upto expectations. We have no idea how well the Segway will do. How can we tell whether or not it was overhyped?
This kind of shooting-from-the-hip editorial commentary fundamentally lowers the level of discussion around here sometimes.
Paris has always been good for Bikes, Bladers, Scooters et al. The wide pavements, the properly enforced cycle lanes.
Lots of people Bike/Blade/Scoot to work in Paris because you can and lets face it Paris is a nice place to see as you go. The Scooters allow the suits to zip around with less hassle than blades, but many people still use blades. And while you look a little silly on a Scooter you are still part of some form of sub-culture, and they are not hanging around.
The Segway makes you look like a muppet. Parisiens will forgive many things, but not looking cool or stylish isn't one of them. This is a city with Policemen trained by the Olympic skating team to be bladers.
I await to be corrected but somehow I can't imagine 2,000 Segway owners meeting at Bastille on a Sunday afternoon for a great high speed crack around the city. Exercise is cool in Paris, being Fat is very uncool.
Vive la differance and all that, but Segway will be as popular as American tourists in Paris.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
While the Segway sounds like a great idea, I'll wait for the following improvements:
1. The weight of the unit has to come down. The current 65 pound weight is a bit much to carry up and down staircases.
2. The unit should be collapsible, so you it makes it much easier to carry on and off means of public transport (trains, trolleys, buses and ferries).
3. The cost has to be much lower than now.
I really hope a company like Dahon (famous for its folding bicycles) will work with Kamen and develop something akin to a Segway that weighs no more than 25-27 pounds, folds and/or collapses to a manageable size, and costs no more than US$2,000 to start and then lower the cost as technology improves.
Something I've been wondering about here...
I recall a few years back a friend of mine telling me a story about his experiences in the military. He did aircraft maintenance on a number of different craft.
Apparently, many of them make use of extremely high RPM gyroscopes in their on board guidance systems. While I don't recall the technical specs, I do remember him telling me that there were specific regulations for how long you had to wait after the aircraft was powered down before you were allowed to begin servicing the systems. Otherwise, there was a very real danger to both the mechanic and the machine. He related that on one occasion he and his team waited the regulated time period and then began to disassemble the planes systems. As they removed the housing with the gyroscope and began to lower it to the tarmack it suddenly flew from there hands and took off - thereby destroying itself. They were all a bit shaken and one of the long time crew chiefs remarked, "Guess that was a good one" because it still hadn't come to a stop.
Now the SegWay supposedly uses, "aircraft quality gyroscopes" for balance and control. If these are powerful enough to keep an adult human upright they must be spinning at a terrific RPM. What are the dangers involved in this? That is to say if someone on one of these were to be struck by a car, would one of these gyros take off and remove some unfortunate soul's head?
1) Bring the price down about an order of magnitude. ...until then, all they have is an expensive toy.
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2) Design it so that it can be collapsed down to
where a commuter can easily take it with them on a bus/ train.
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A goal is a dream with a deadline
In case of collision, the Segway "backs up gently when it bumps an object and has low pressure tires that soften the force on anything it rides over."
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
I had read about the Segway, but when I saw one demoed with my own eyes, I was profoundly astonished. I suddenly felt I was in the 21st century. When I say that, I realize that there isn't much about the Segway that couldn't have been developed years earlier (I'm not talking about possible novel improvements in energy density of batteries or the like). Say what you will (and I'm about to), but I think that *some* of the hype is deserved.
But, after the demo, I really started to wonder about the real usability of the thing and I think I came upon a kind of Achilles' heel that I don't think the design of the Segway addresses: uneven surfaces that induce a roll. Imagine a perfectly flat sidewalk, and then imagine that on the right half of the sidewalk I lay down some humps - let's make them 1/2" high and 6" wide, and let me space their centers 12" apart. Now, on the left side of the sidewalk, let me lay down similar humps similarly, except I'll offset them relative to the other set such that they are in line with the gaps in the other set.
Now, here I come with my Segway at four feet per second. I get to the bumps, and each wheel is forced up and down 1/2" four times a second. Aren't my Segway's handlebars going to be jerking from side to side very rapidly, displacing maybe 3"-4" or so? What's that going to be like to hold on to?
I also wonder about "failure modes," i.e., one-person collisions and falls. Also, what happens when there's a gyro failure? I can imagine the thing falling over like a leaf rake if the pitch gyro stopped working.
He wouldn't have had to post it. I posted it earlier, but it was rejected.
2002-11-14 00:16:01 Opera 7, beta 1 for Windows released (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-11-18 14:56:49 Order your Segway now!! (articles,news) (rejected)
I work in midtown Manhattan, and yesterday at my lunch hour, I saw about 4 people riding Segways along the sidewalk down 7th Avenue. I'm guessing it was a PR thing, to build buzz. Note that I saw them at 7th Ave. and 56th Street... which is about 10 blocks north of Times Square. And that's where they seemed to be heading.
I gotta say: they were damn cool... and at least the way these folks were riding them, they didn't look particularly dangerous to pedestrians. Of course NYC has very wide sidewalks.
I saw some of these at EPCOT in September, 02. I also noticed that the stroller rental stands were clogged with people renting those battery-powered carts (moto-thrones) that are occasionally seen in grocery stores for, I assumed, handicapped folks.
The alarming thing was that based on overheard conversations, a surprising amount of the people who were getting these appeared not to be handicapped, just too lazy to walk all over the disney parks.
I am in favor of coexisting with technology as much as the next guy, but I have to question things when it makes our (US) overfat and lazy culture more overfat and lazy.
How sleepless is the egg, knowing that which throws the stone forsees the bone.
I agree. It is overpriced (but that is a Catch 22 -- the price will come down when they sell a lot, they'll sell a lot when the price comes down), but the technology embodied in it is amazing. It's funny to think that the Looney Tunes/Jetsons single wheeled robots may be closer to reality that really good walking robots.
I also agree that, while Kamen himself may not be the super genius that the hype would have us believe, the Edison style invention factory he has created at DEKA is a cool idea and I really hope they make it big with something (either the Segway, the new Stirling engine, or something). I think it is encouraging that someone is doing inventive research without a business plan.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness