Arjun Ram writes "MSNBC.com is reporting that renting a segway would cost as much as $20 for each 30-minute increment, for up to 90 minutes. Users can also pay $5 for a test drive, or 'pre-glide' as Lambeth calls it. Neat!"
...and go where?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
So, aside from pedestrian-friendly cities like Boston and New York, where the hell would you take it from one place to another and back in a half hour?
renting is kinda needed for many...
by
ptorrone
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
renting is a good idea, the ht for many people is a big investment, trying one out first is often worth it. the challenge with the segway ht is most people can't imagine what's like to use a self-balancing device like the ht and if it would make sense for their travel needs. i have a segway ht, and at first, the my commute took a little longer that i calculated mostly because people would stop and ask me questions, most would ask to try it out and many would be so impressed with the technology and ease of use, they would purchase one, i didn't expect that either, in my city (seattle) there are quite a few people with segway hts, also the city uses them as opposed to cars for many tasks.
the city of seattle let me interview them, so good info (some of it pretty technical, but very detailed) can be found here.
cheers,
pt
Amusement parks
by
mgkimsal2
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
As someone else pointed out earlier, these would be great for amusement parks. I just wonder if they could keep enough around to rent so that it wouldn't piss people off who couldn't get time on one. $40/hour seems like a good way to keep the users down to a minimum to start with, but I could eventually see a park having a few hundred around to use for, let's say, $15/hour or so, or perhaps $80/day. Put a little credit card slider thingy on it so you can 'pay as you go' and you're all set. $40/hour is just too pricey at the moment for most people, but amusement parks *do* seem a somewhat logical place to do 'rentals'. It's an enclosed area where people already do a large amount of walking, and are looking for entertaining/fun experiences.
Not Gonna Work
by
moehoward
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It seems that they whole purpose of the Segway was to get rid of using cars, not get rid of walking. Seems that this rental thing is trying to supplant walking. It was supposed to be for inner-city commutes, not tourism.
The more this thing flops, the more I'm proven right that it was going to flop. It's the next Furby.
They will never be able to make enough money on this to cover their huge start up costs and ongoing fixed costs. Look for company announcements about restructuring or refocus in the next 12 months. Followed by discounts, chapter 7, and inevitable lawsuits about accidents.
Unless, of course, they start running them on hydrogen. Then, I'll buy 12 of them.
-- "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Re:$20/30mins ? $5 for a test drive ???
by
Rosco+P.+Coltrane
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Then check out this bike:
http://www.bromptonbike.com/
I use this bike everywhere I have to be socially acceptable, and in the bus, train and airplanes. Granted it's not given, but it's a lot less than a car, or a segway for that matter.
Then again, I live in Europe;-)
-- "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Stu, allow me to tell you something. This is probably the biggest misconception amongst people in the community.
I'm 15, and probably the youngest Early Adopter out there. An Early Adopter is an owner who purchased their Segway HT through Amazon, and was one of the first units shipped. I ordered mine, for example, an hour and a half after the launch back in November. A Segway i-Series is by no means cheap, about $5000 retail. I chose mine in lieu of a car for now, and hoped that it would make my life a bit easier and productive.
Now, over two months in use, my i-Series has in no way disappointed. My commute to school leaves a smile on my face as I follow the scenic route I plan in the morning, a beautiful alternative to driving on US-1. I no longer contribute to the thermal and chemical pollution of cars or even buses, and my method of transportation is just as unique as the people whose smiles reach from ear to ear as they see me. I've made new friends and acquaintances with the HT as my conversation piece, even. It has actually made Miami a safer place for me.
Now, to address your "fat" comment. Most of us have come to a definite conclusion about the Segway in regards to concerns like yours. I'm a geek, like so many others out there in/. are. I used a car to get everywhere before my HT, and I never walked much farther than from my computer chair to the fridge, or from class to class. Now not only do I get out and see the environment (as shoddily preserved as it may be!), but I have a new form of exercise. It may not seem like much here, but you would be quite surprised to learn that using an HT is a good bit of work for your legs. You don't notice it at first, but the ache is there for about two weeks. The fine muscle control over muscles you didn't really know existed is a definite exercise. Okay, I understand how someone -could- get fatter if they were a fitness nut, walked or jogged everywhere, and suddenly replaced that with a Segway HT. But that's not the point of the Seg, folks. The company itself states, and those of us in the community agree, that the Segway HT isn't intended to replace walking, it's designed to replace short car trips that have disastrous effects on our environment, and our pockets too.
If anybody has any further questions or comments regarding the Segway, my experiences, or just about anything, feel free to drop me an email (opti6600@bellsouth.net).
Best regards, Jordan Prevé
My Segway rental report
by
AdamBa
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I was on a Disney cruise ship in February and they were letting you ride a Segway around the basketball cout for 10 minutes for some "nominal" fee ($10 or $15 as I recall). So I wandered up there with my 1-year-old son and tried it out, and filed this report in email:
"On Friday I rode on a Segway, that newfangled two-wheeled
transporter. Disney has some promotional deal with them and
was offering 10-minute rides. I was watching Noah for a while so
I strolled him up and parked him on the edge of the basketball
court. The Segway is technologically cool but I am baffled by
people who think it is going to revolutionize anything. There may
be a small niche for people who need to go twelve miles an hour
with both hands occupied, but it's pretty small. The thing was
pretty easy to ride. I only fell off twice, once when I was trying
to determine how fast you could go around a corner (and found
out the answer), and once when I got off at the end and it
decided to back up and attack my shins, then lurch forward
ten feet before slowly keeling over in a rough approximation of
the climactic scene of 'Bonnie and Clyde'. The cast member [Disney-speak for employee] who
was helping me assured me everything was fine and the machine
just had to be reset. He whipped up out his little reset key and
applied it to the reset dealie, which seemed to have no effect. I
quickly grabbed the stroller and left, glancing over my shoulder
once to see him ministering to the thing with a worried look on
his face. Still a few bugs in the system I guess. When we get
our final bill, I will check if there is an item for $4,995 marked
'destroyed Segway'".
- adam
They're common in NYC already
by
howardcohen
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
FYI, they're now a common sight in Central Park on weekends, among the rollerbladers, cyclists, joggers and strollers.
We have different tastes than you do, so please stop trying to impose your "taste" on us Do you commute to work? do you live in a suburban or (truly) rural environment?
Here we go again with this taste/fashion arguement of "sprawl"
fashion and taste are irrelevant. SPRAWL is real. Drive between detroit and dearborn. Between Toronto and Mississauga. Between %yournearestcity% and %somebedroomcommunity%. People who are buying $150k cookie cutter houses on 120x200 lots anyplace the land is flat is the problem. They depend on massive highways and byways to get their kids to school, food for dinner, a cup of coffee (starbucks drivethrough..). It is ecological suicide. The property that we are building these suburbs is (nearly gauranteed) to be the most productive in NorthAmerica (thats because communities in NA where plopped ontop of good agricultural land)
The part payed for by my fuel taxes. Unfortunately, much of that gets robbed for bike trails, METRO rail and busses
Do you *really* believe this? Reread my earlier post - your FUEL taxes dont even pay for the paving/maintenance/building of roads(!). The other issues (the sprawl itself) IS NOT payed by you -- its payed by everyone. BTW, each situation is different, but public transit is a minor expense in relation to the roads themselves... and bike trails/pedestrian transit routes -- really, common, are you joking? Most NA cities pay little more than lip service to these needs, let alone spend actual $. ARe you bloody kidding???
Shh, be careful not to give away the secret of carlessness. I don't own a car and hence live as if I'm rich, even though I'm not. That extra several hundred dollars a month I don't spend on payments, fuel, insurance, and repairs goes into other fun stuff, like flying from the pathetic east coast to Arizona 2-3 times a year first class on America West so I can hike Picacho Peak, The White Tanks, Estrella, eat big steaks at Crazy Eds and Pinnacle Peak Patio, etc, etc...
But it is a choice and I'd not want to force others to follow it. Not owning a car can be inconvenient at times, but for those times, there are car rentals. You also need to ensure you buy a house near a decent transit line... But if done right, it's fairly painless.
I'm 15, and probably the youngest Early Adopter out there... I used [drive] a car to get everywhere before my HT...
Isn't the legal driving age 16 in the US? Is this to say you "used [to drive] a car to get everywhere" with a Learner's Permit?
Go to a pedestrian-friendly city
by
fm6
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Maybe if enough people had Segways, more cities would be pedestrian friendly. Unfortunately, at these prices, few people will have Segways. The main appeal seems to be the clever engineering rather than the cost-benefit.
One notable PF city (San Francisco) has gone and banned the Segway. I blame this on kneejerk anti-business attitudes. Now, "kneejerk" is not a word I use lightly -- it's too popular with right-wingers who are too lazy to properly rebut the arguments of left-wingers. (Indeed, you could say that using the word is itself usually a kneejerk reaction.) I say "kneejerk" in this case because the main anti-Segway group loves to make comparisons with SUVs and other corporate stupidities. But they themselves admit that there's only been one Segway-related injury so far.
The big concern seems to be that Segways will be misused by irresponsible riders who will speed down sidewalks, scattering senior citizens right and left. But the Segway designers seem to have anticipated precisely this issue: how fast your Segway can go is determined by which key you use to turn it on. The keys are conspicuously colored, so it would be easy to require Segwayers to use the "beginner" key in heavily trafficed areas. That limits the scooter to 6mph, which is about how fast most people walk.
If people want to live in less densly populated areas, have a nice home and a yard, let the kids play, a seperate bedroom for every kid, a workshop for every parent, a media room, etc. somehow that is some kind of threat to you? How about being able to open a window below the 20th floor without choking on the smell of fermented human urine, who are you to tell them no?
I have a theory that people who live in the suburbs hate everyone. They do their best to avoid all human contact.
These people by SUV's as third-homes in which they spend a few hours each day driving on 16-lane highways to get to-and-from their suburban homes with neighbours who love eachother so much that they don't want to get out of their cars to open their doors, they separate their yards with arsenic-treated fences and close all the windows to block the sound of central airconditioners in the summer.
I knew one fellow who would never actually step outside or speak to anyone except his family or coworkers except for the weekends. His skin was desparately pale. He would get up, have breakfast, enter his attached garage, hit the garage door opener button on the right side of the visor, back out, drive along the highway, coffee in hand, radio going. About an hour later, he would arrive at his workplace downtown, hit the button on the left of his visor, drive into his office tower, park in his allotted spot, work, then do the reverse to go home.
Your assumption that living downtown means smelling your neighbour's urine, to me says that you're among these mizerable people who simply doesn't want to deal with anyone outside your family or workplace.
... granted... people generally are just as much assholes downtown as they are in the suburbs... and as such there is a greater density of assholes per square metre downtown as in the suburbs... meaning that their urine, blasting stereos, hyped-up cars, late drunken screaming etc is more prevalent... but buying a fully-detached air conditioned home in the suburbs along with a matching SUV and "media room!", doesn't make you part of any solution... the money we pour into 16-lane highways would be better spent on trains, and your houses would be better as parks and farmland.
IMHO, the real problem is the way people treat one another... and I don't know how to fix that.
P.s. what do your kids do when they are too old to 'play?'
Slashdot Mirror
So, aside from pedestrian-friendly cities like Boston and New York, where the hell would you take it from one place to another and back in a half hour?
renting is a good idea, the ht for many people is a big investment, trying one out first is often worth it. the challenge with the segway ht is most people can't imagine what's like to use a self-balancing device like the ht and if it would make sense for their travel needs. i have a segway ht, and at first, the my commute took a little longer that i calculated mostly because people would stop and ask me questions, most would ask to try it out and many would be so impressed with the technology and ease of use, they would purchase one, i didn't expect that either, in my city (seattle) there are quite a few people with segway hts, also the city uses them as opposed to cars for many tasks.
i'm up to 800 miles on mine, click here to read the trip log.
the city of seattle let me interview them, so good info (some of it pretty technical, but very detailed) can be found here.
cheers,
pt
As someone else pointed out earlier, these would be great for amusement parks. I just wonder if they could keep enough around to rent so that it wouldn't piss people off who couldn't get time on one. $40/hour seems like a good way to keep the users down to a minimum to start with, but I could eventually see a park having a few hundred around to use for, let's say, $15/hour or so, or perhaps $80/day. Put a little credit card slider thingy on it so you can 'pay as you go' and you're all set. $40/hour is just too pricey at the moment for most people, but amusement parks *do* seem a somewhat logical place to do 'rentals'. It's an enclosed area where people already do a large amount of walking, and are looking for entertaining/fun experiences.
creation science book
It seems that they whole purpose of the Segway was to get rid of using cars, not get rid of walking. Seems that this rental thing is trying to supplant walking. It was supposed to be for inner-city commutes, not tourism.
The more this thing flops, the more I'm proven right that it was going to flop. It's the next Furby.
They will never be able to make enough money on this to cover their huge start up costs and ongoing fixed costs. Look for company announcements about restructuring or refocus in the next 12 months. Followed by discounts, chapter 7, and inevitable lawsuits about accidents.
Unless, of course, they start running them on hydrogen. Then, I'll buy 12 of them.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Then check out this bike :
;-)
http://www.bromptonbike.com/
I use this bike everywhere I have to be socially acceptable, and in the bus, train and airplanes. Granted it's not given, but it's a lot less than a car, or a segway for that matter.
Then again, I live in Europe
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Stu, allow me to tell you something. This is probably the biggest misconception amongst people in the community.
/. are. I used a car to get everywhere before my HT, and I never walked much farther than from my computer chair to the fridge, or from class to class. Now not only do I get out and see the environment (as shoddily preserved as it may be!), but I have a new form of exercise. It may not seem like much here, but you would be quite surprised to learn that using an HT is a good bit of work for your legs. You don't notice it at first, but the ache is there for about two weeks. The fine muscle control over muscles you didn't really know existed is a definite exercise. Okay, I understand how someone -could- get fatter if they were a fitness nut, walked or jogged everywhere, and suddenly replaced that with a Segway HT. But that's not the point of the Seg, folks. The company itself states, and those of us in the community agree, that the Segway HT isn't intended to replace walking, it's designed to replace short car trips that have disastrous effects on our environment, and our pockets too.
I'm 15, and probably the youngest Early Adopter out there. An Early Adopter is an owner who purchased their Segway HT through Amazon, and was one of the first units shipped. I ordered mine, for example, an hour and a half after the launch back in November. A Segway i-Series is by no means cheap, about $5000 retail. I chose mine in lieu of a car for now, and hoped that it would make my life a bit easier and productive.
Now, over two months in use, my i-Series has in no way disappointed. My commute to school leaves a smile on my face as I follow the scenic route I plan in the morning, a beautiful alternative to driving on US-1. I no longer contribute to the thermal and chemical pollution of cars or even buses, and my method of transportation is just as unique as the people whose smiles reach from ear to ear as they see me. I've made new friends and acquaintances with the HT as my conversation piece, even. It has actually made Miami a safer place for me.
Now, to address your "fat" comment. Most of us have come to a definite conclusion about the Segway in regards to concerns like yours. I'm a geek, like so many others out there in
If anybody has any further questions or comments regarding the Segway, my experiences, or just about anything, feel free to drop me an email (opti6600@bellsouth.net).
Best regards,
Jordan Prevé
"On Friday I rode on a Segway, that newfangled two-wheeled transporter. Disney has some promotional deal with them and was offering 10-minute rides. I was watching Noah for a while so I strolled him up and parked him on the edge of the basketball court. The Segway is technologically cool but I am baffled by people who think it is going to revolutionize anything. There may be a small niche for people who need to go twelve miles an hour with both hands occupied, but it's pretty small. The thing was pretty easy to ride. I only fell off twice, once when I was trying to determine how fast you could go around a corner (and found out the answer), and once when I got off at the end and it decided to back up and attack my shins, then lurch forward ten feet before slowly keeling over in a rough approximation of the climactic scene of 'Bonnie and Clyde'. The cast member [Disney-speak for employee] who was helping me assured me everything was fine and the machine just had to be reset. He whipped up out his little reset key and applied it to the reset dealie, which seemed to have no effect. I quickly grabbed the stroller and left, glancing over my shoulder once to see him ministering to the thing with a worried look on his face. Still a few bugs in the system I guess. When we get our final bill, I will check if there is an item for $4,995 marked 'destroyed Segway'".
- adam
FYI, they're now a common sight in Central Park on weekends, among the rollerbladers, cyclists, joggers and strollers.
Believe it or not, many people do not want to live in large cities
if by many you mean less than 25% in the USA
Or, in Canada, the 23% of Canadians who live in a rural environment.
We have different tastes than you do, so please stop trying to impose your "taste" on us
Do you commute to work? do you live in a suburban or (truly) rural environment?
Here we go again with this taste/fashion arguement of "sprawl"
fashion and taste are irrelevant. SPRAWL is real. Drive between detroit and dearborn. Between Toronto and Mississauga. Between %yournearestcity% and %somebedroomcommunity%. People who are buying $150k cookie cutter houses on 120x200 lots anyplace the land is flat is the problem. They depend on massive highways and byways to get their kids to school, food for dinner, a cup of coffee (starbucks drivethrough..). It is ecological suicide. The property that we are building these suburbs is (nearly gauranteed) to be the most productive in NorthAmerica (thats because communities in NA where plopped ontop of good agricultural land)
The part payed for by my fuel taxes. Unfortunately, much of that gets robbed for bike trails, METRO rail and busses
Do you *really* believe this? Reread my earlier post - your FUEL taxes dont even pay for the paving/maintenance/building of roads(!). The other issues (the sprawl itself) IS NOT payed by you -- its payed by everyone. BTW, each situation is different, but public transit is a minor expense in relation to the roads themselves... and bike trails/pedestrian transit routes -- really, common, are you joking? Most NA cities pay little more than lip service to these needs, let alone spend actual $. ARe you bloody kidding???
But it is a choice and I'd not want to force others to follow it. Not owning a car can be inconvenient at times, but for those times, there are car rentals. You also need to ensure you buy a house near a decent transit line... But if done right, it's fairly painless.
One notable PF city (San Francisco) has gone and banned the Segway. I blame this on kneejerk anti-business attitudes. Now, "kneejerk" is not a word I use lightly -- it's too popular with right-wingers who are too lazy to properly rebut the arguments of left-wingers. (Indeed, you could say that using the word is itself usually a kneejerk reaction.) I say "kneejerk" in this case because the main anti-Segway group loves to make comparisons with SUVs and other corporate stupidities. But they themselves admit that there's only been one Segway-related injury so far.
The big concern seems to be that Segways will be misused by irresponsible riders who will speed down sidewalks, scattering senior citizens right and left. But the Segway designers seem to have anticipated precisely this issue: how fast your Segway can go is determined by which key you use to turn it on. The keys are conspicuously colored, so it would be easy to require Segwayers to use the "beginner" key in heavily trafficed areas. That limits the scooter to 6mph, which is about how fast most people walk.
If people want to live in less densly populated areas, have a nice home and a yard, let the kids play, a seperate bedroom for every kid, a workshop for every parent, a media room, etc. somehow that is some kind of threat to you? How about being able to open a window below the 20th floor without choking on the smell of fermented human urine, who are you to tell them no?
I have a theory that people who live in the suburbs hate everyone. They do their best to avoid all human contact.
These people by SUV's as third-homes in which they spend a few hours each day driving on 16-lane highways to get to-and-from their suburban homes with neighbours who love eachother so much that they don't want to get out of their cars to open their doors, they separate their yards with arsenic-treated fences and close all the windows to block the sound of central airconditioners in the summer.
I knew one fellow who would never actually step outside or speak to anyone except his family or coworkers except for the weekends. His skin was desparately pale. He would get up, have breakfast, enter his attached garage, hit the garage door opener button on the right side of the visor, back out, drive along the highway, coffee in hand, radio going. About an hour later, he would arrive at his workplace downtown, hit the button on the left of his visor, drive into his office tower, park in his allotted spot, work, then do the reverse to go home.
Your assumption that living downtown means smelling your neighbour's urine, to me says that you're among these mizerable people who simply doesn't want to deal with anyone outside your family or workplace.
... granted... people generally are just as much assholes downtown as they are in the suburbs... and as such there is a greater density of assholes per square metre downtown as in the suburbs... meaning that their urine, blasting stereos, hyped-up cars, late drunken screaming etc is more prevalent... but buying a fully-detached air conditioned home in the suburbs along with a matching SUV and "media room!", doesn't make you part of any solution... the money we pour into 16-lane highways would be better spent on trains, and your houses would be better as parks and farmland.
IMHO, the real problem is the way people treat one another... and I don't know how to fix that.
P.s. what do your kids do when they are too old to 'play?'