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The Segway, Five Years Later
abb_road writes "The Segway was introduced with a promise to transform cities; BusinessWeek has an article on what the Segway has accomplished in 5 years, and how 'personal transportation,' and the company, have changed. From the article: 'The first Segway — a clean-running, technologically dumbfounding, fun-as-hell-to-ride device that was pretty much impossible to fall off of — was introduced to so much fanfare five years ago that the public-relations agency that helped engineer it still uses it as a case study in how to create a media frenzy. It may be an even better case study in media backlash. The initial euphoria had hardly worn off before a new consensus emerged: This was all much ado about a $5,000 scooter.'"
Does anyone have the list of the cities redesigned to accomodate the Segway?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
When "IT" was first announced, I thought Kamen had come up with a new form of fuel that would replace petroleum and really "change the world". So the scooter was kind of a let-down in comparison. Even so, I would love to have one and I imagine most people would. I just wouldn't want to pay for it!
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It's surprisingly not hard to fall off of a segway if you've never been on one before. You have no idea that you can't stand on it before it's been turned on. (I did that fell over caught myself)
In addition. The Turning controls are on one of the handles and if you're drunk and jousting on Segways (Which is REALLY FUN btw.) falling off is pretty easy as well. I leaned to far forward which makes you go very fast I was attempting to charge through a hallway and while going fast I realized that I was quickly drifting towards the wall. I attempted to fix this but twisted to hard on the steering grip and it very quickly spun me in a 360 into the wall.. Which actually hurt pretty good. You don't have to be a president to fall off of one.
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
>>it still uses it as a case study in how to create a media frenzy. It may be an even better case study in media backlash.
Well, its looking only half the picture. Best case study would be "How to create media frenzy, completly fail to deliver it, and still remain in business"
"pretty much impossible to fall off" - unless you are President Bush. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2989000. stm
If the article is all there is on this subject, then Segway hasn't accomplished much since the scooter was finished. They've thought about a lot of potentially neat things, but they're still just that - thoughts.
Makes me want to run right out and put all my money into just about anything except Segway!
but it's not the one its designer intended. Indeed, on a segway, you look like a total dork and you're dangerous (I was passed by one on the sidewalk, I can attest to this).
But there's one area where segways excel, and that's giving a lot of freedom for disabled people to move around. Each time I hear about a segway story, it's about some handicapped person who finds it marvellous. Like this story for example, or this one which are rather typical.
So in short: I reckon segways should be banned on public thoroughfares, and allowed anywhere for disabled people.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
How to render the Segway obsolete...
BAM! Third wheel.
My GF and I rented Segways on a recent trip to Montreal. It was a blast. We zipped all over the waterfront, testing it on inclines, gravel, etc. It's pretty amazing how steep a surface it can climb. I wished it could go faster, actually.
These things could revolutionize cities, but it's not an overnight proposition because you're battling for real estate on the road with cars. Cities like Montreal, with extensive and sensible bike lanes/routes, make the most sense initially. But if they sold them in NYC, you'd really have to sell models equipped with miniguns to defend yourself against crazy taxi drivers.
In any case, if you get the chance to take one for a spin, do. It's really fun.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
A few months ago I finally got the chance to ride a Segway, at the HOPE convention. They had rented a pair and sectioned off a safe area to zoom around in, and it was a load of fun to ride around the hotel's mezzanine while laughing like Pee-Wee Herman.
However, there was also a little bicycle that someone left lying around, and I got the chance to ride around the mezzanine on that for a while, also while laughing like Pee-Wee Herman. That was also a load of fun, one that wouldn't cost me four-figures to duplicate, require me to remain standing, or control my direction with what may be the most unnatural steering mechanism ever.
Both rides gave me a sore throat friom all that Pee-Wee Herman laughing, though.
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Does everyone else remember the hype that swirled before the release of the Segway?
Ginger!
IT!
A device so revolutionary and world-changing, that its codename was "IT"!!!
After seeing it, Jeff Bezos was known to say "You have a product so revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it."
Bidders paid out over $100,000 EACH for the first three examples of a production Segway.
Well, we all know how it went from there.
I want to thank Dean Kamen for permanently calibrating my expectations when it comes to new world-changing products.
I'm much less excitable about such claims now.
Like the article says, a $5000 scooter. There are electric scooters out there that could also be carried onto a subway car with you, but they're 1/20th the price. Sure, they don't have the same range, or cool factor, but who the heck did Kamen think his market was? We're talking about a device to make it easier for people to get from public transportation hubs to their destination endpoints. These aren't the kind of people that have $5000 to waste on a personal transporter. You're talking about 10 years of bus transfers before it pays for itself.
I live about a mile from nearby subway stations, and have been known to be an early adopter - a perfect candidate for a Segway (other than the fact that I'm not sure about it's viability in Boston winter conditions). I told myself that I'd buy one once they got down to about $1500. Well, it's five years later and the price hasn't budged. If they really wanted to change the world, they would have figured out a way to sell them for $1000.
-BbT
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If the Segway was introduced at $500 instead of $5000, it would have changed the world. Technologially, there doesn't seem to be anything about these things that absolutely prevent them being made at a marginal cost of less than $500, given enough unit sales to amortize fixed costs and manufacturing investments over. Which really means if you had an infinite amount of investment money and unlimited time to recoup it in, eventually you would recoup it. Which is not saying much at all. The Apple Newton would have changed the world if it had been introduced at $100 instead of $1000, and there is little reason to think that we could not, today, produce them for less than that.
It seems to me that changing the way people move in and out of cities is a catch-22 phenomenon. No matter how compatible your new idea is with existing modes of transportation (which the Segway, in truth, was not), you need the city to provide infrastructure before it will be widely adopted. And cities won't provide infrastructure until there is widespread adoption. The only way around this is to price the thing at a level where a lot of people will simply say "what the hell" and start using them, creating a problem that cities have to respond to. People are so much better at responding to problems than planning.
Truthfully, cities don't make more than token concessions to bikes, which compared to supporting Segways are much simpler to accomodate. Some cities even don't seem to give a damn about pedestrians. The only way to change this is the same way that automakers killed public transit: be willing to lose a lot of money in order to make not using your product inconvenient for people.
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I've been waiting for a Segway knockoff to appear so I could actually afford a similar device.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
The Segway was unveiled in December, 2001, meaning it was a scant three months and change after 9/11. I've always thought that something that hurt the Segway in the marketplace was the fact that here was the USA (where the thing was unveiled, invented, target market, etc.) recovering from its worst attack in history (terrorist or otherwise), the economy is in the shitter, and here's some eccentric genius trying to get everyone excited about a $5,000 scooter.
Perhaps the Segway would have met the same "meh" fate either way but does anyone think that, had 9/11 never happened, the Segway would have met a better response?
Schnapple
I made a post that, in order for it to be successful, it must do the following.
1) Be an order of magnitude cheaper
2) Break down into a package small and light enough to carry on public transportation
Otherwise, it's just an expensive glorified electric scooter
I stand by my original accessment...
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Only here would a caveat about drunken Segway jousting be modded "informative."
These tours are also conveniently known as the "tourists who we will beat up and mug" pre-screening process........
They use them in DC. I see them all the time. The people riding them tend to be courteous though. I'd rather see a segway rider on a sidewalk than your typical city skateboard punk.
Finding other idiots on
... the cost of these things is impractically high right now. Once competition is allowed to play, we'll see hundreds of knock-offs from other companies at rates that make them practical. By that time, they'll be even better with fuel cells and better batteries.
Someone made a "segway" with the old Lego MindStorms kit :
http://www.teamhassenplug.org/robots/legway/
I can see the Segway being expensive for being an electric scooter, but 5000$USD is way too expensive.
the problem I have with these machines is that some government agencies were providing to people who had fitness handicaps (lardasses) as a health benefit covered because of the ADA.
Was really funny watching Atlanta issue a few of the machines to fat cops, cops who could not walk a beat if they had too. Seemed a few other government agencies began looking at these because of "union" rules interest.
I would not mind the machines for people with genuine handicaps, but I certainly don't want to be forced to buy them with my tax money. There are other alternatives that worked for many years before without the need to spend an exhorbinant amount of money.
The problem with genorisity of this sort is that its all so very easy to sell because its not your money and its a guilt trip if you oppose.
A great invention, but too costly and limited in its current form.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Standing on a spot for a longer time is actually LESS comfortable than walking around.
I would rather walk than stand put on that little platform, as is.
if it were twice as fast, then it would make sense (but than again, its autostabilisation would crap its virutal pants when dealing with 4 times the kinetic energy).
I met one once in real live, and while it was faster than walking pace, i could effortlessly drive a lot faster on a bike (which is cheaper, has "unlimited range", a physical autostabilisation called "rotational inertia" and light enough to just pick up and carry up some stairs)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
It looks like he just didn't turn it on first. I'm sure it's a common mistake.
Some of those pictures look like they were arranged to make it looks like he was riding, then fell off, which probably isn't true.
... it can't be impossible! :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxtc75biScU
She almost had a shish-ka-Paris with that mop strapped to her backside.
The Segway is a solution looking for a problem.
Well, see, that IRL is actually the whole issue and measure of a product's worth: whether you'd pay the price for it, or not.
Because if we're talking as in "well, if it was free of charge, I'd get one", then you've covered pretty much everything in that category. I know wouldn't refuse a lot of things, if they were free, even if they're bloody stupid and/or I have no intention of using them more than once or twice. But if they cost 0$, hey, I can just chuck it in the garbage bin later and I've lost nothing, right?
The problem is that IRL most things aren't free, and bang/buck is actually a very important criterion. There's a moment when you look at a toy and at it's price tag, and decide, "gee, it would be bloody _stupid_ to pay _that_ much for that." And many a product ends up a dud not because it's a stupid product per se, but because it's just not worth the price tag it comes with.
And that's where the Segway failed. You're not the only one who wouldn't mind one for free. I wouldn't either. I don't think much of it as a means of transportation, but, hey, it might make a good high-tech toy to play once or twice with. But when you slap a $5000 price tag on that toy, it start's looking like a stupid toy for people with more money than brains. I could even afford that price very easily, but looking at it from a bang-per-buck perspective, it's entirely too little bang for that kind of buck. I can easily think a _lot_ of other stuff to blow my money on, that would be more useful, fun, or whatever.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Like some other respondents below, I recently had a chance to try out a Segway on a 90 minute tour at a mountain resort. It was an amazing experience. I was quite surprised how much power those things have - essential for climbing up those trails and twisting resort roads.
And yes, you sure as hell can fall off, especially if you take a turn at speed. The thing turns by counter-rotating the two wheels, so its turning radius is nearly zero. Due to considerable inertia, the turning radius of my body is quite a bit greater than zero when moving forward at 12 mph. Note however, I never fell off, although it was close a couple times.
Is the segway revolutionary? At $5000 a pop, not a chance. Too bad they couldn't get the price down to the $1000 range. Is the segway useful? The people complaining that it just replaces WALKING should note that 3x the speed makes quite a difference, as well as the fact that not all of us could walk 26 miles a day without serious physical discomfort.
Whether it's useful or not, I suspect we'll be seeing more and more operating within the tourism industry.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
The ultimate purpose of PR or marketting is to sell a product. That's it. That's why we pay those people.
In the over-production economy of today it's damn easy to produce lots of anything, but it's hard to sell it. Insert your favourite product and major corporation manufacturing it, and it would be trivial for them to ramp their production to the point where it exceeds world demand. Nike or Adidas could swamp the world in sports shoes, Samsung could bury the world in TVs, and Coca Cola could easily ramp its production to the point where the whole human species could drink only that. That's not the problem. The problem is selling that stuff.
_That_ is the problem that marketting and PR were supposed to solve. Plain and simple. That's why their clients pay for their services.
A marketting or PR campaign whose backlash actually hurts product sales (e.g., Daikatana and the massive backlash to the "John Romero will make you his bitch" campaign), is plain and simple a flop. I don't know how you want to redefine PR's job, but from the client's point of view, he didn't get _his_ problem solved: selling more products. That's the real problem he had and needed solved. Anything else is just missing the point and solving the wrong problem.
Just exposure is damn easy to get. You only need to fund a spam campaign or something equally stupid, and you'll get all the negative exposure you can possibly hope for. Or get your products to fail in some spectacular way. (Incendiary laptops with Sony batteries, anyone?) That'll get you in everyone's head. But that's not the exposure anyone actually wants.
The trick is getting the kind of exposure that makes people actually want to buy the product. You need to get people to associate product with being cool, trendy, hip, or just having some benefit out of it. Stuff that makes them want to buy product X instead of product Y. (E.g., make them want Coca Cola instead of Pepsi or water from the tap.) That's really what the client pays for, and that's why he pays trained experts instead of just doing some hare-brained publicity stunt himself.
Isolating half of the issue as "only that's my job, and it doesn't involve whether or not it helps you" is missing the point. Saying "my job is to create market awareness, it's not my job whether it also helps your business or kill it" is as stupid as hearing a surgeon say, "well, my job is only to cut you open, not to actually remove your appendix and/or make sure you survive."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...more reasons why it's absurd to suggest that the Segway would be replacing cars (or even bikes/scooters) any time soon (or ever). This, of course, only applies to urban areas... there are other obvious reasons why it's useless outside of a large, dense metropolitan area.
:o)
;o) People who want to exert themselves will walk or use a bike, people who want to relax while traveling will get the $500 Civic.
1) You can only transport 1 person on it. Even in the $500 Civic, you'll still probably be able to take your wife/girlfriend and a buddy or two along. With the Segway, you'd have to shell out *another* $5000 for each person who wants to go with. So when you wanna go for a nice Sunday "stroll", or go grab some food a few blocks away, you better hope you like doing it alone.
2) The transportation of even reasonably bulky items isn't possible. Planning on traveling with anything more then the clothes on your back...? Well, the $500 Civic wins that one by a landslide... heck, even the old fashioned scooter (and possibly even a bike) would probably win this one by a good margin.
3) It can't (or most likely "won't") be used to go very far. I think its limit is somewhere between 10 and 20 miles per charge. But more importantly, you're *standing* while you're traveling, so you won't want to go more than a few miles. (Remember, if you weren't interested in being lazy, then you wouldn't have bought a Segway in the first place.)
I honestly think that the Segway (as a whole) is the most impractical invention ever created. I think that the technology behind it is freaking amazing... but unfortunately, they took ground-breaking new tech, and put it in a completely impractical device. There isn't a single thing that a Segway can do that can't be done better and (usually much) cheaper by using other transportation methods that have been around for a hundred (or even thousands of) years. The only scenario I can think of where the practical *function* of a Segway supersedes other methods is for police officers doing day-long foot patrols. But then, the function is the only advantage... when you factor in the cost... it's outrageous. My tax dollars paying $5000 per-person just so cops don't have to walk (God forbid), while they patrol the city?
I think the benefit of a Segway exists only in novelty. It's cool as hell, but not much more can be said than that.
WATYF
A device, whose sole trick is balance achieved electromechanically, should be smart enough to sense when a foot and a hand are on it and thus throw itself into balance mode. Sure, you'd need a key to actually go anywhere, but no on-board logic to help prevent you from falling on your face without following a prescribed power on sequence? Not even optionally? Bad design!
My car has NEVER caused me to hurtle dangerously out of the driver's seat because I failed to turn a key.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
I started the word in question with "Acc", what I needed was some "Ass" to come along and fix it.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Agreed. Not only are the the electric scooters that follow the standard scooter design foldable, lighter, and much cheaper, when the batteries run down they're still usable as a conventional scooter.
When the batteries on the Segway run down you've got a 70 lb brick.
I just read Code Name Ginger, which doesn't really ever throw the hard punches, but as I read the book I wondered two things:
1. What was the honest reaction of all the guys hired in total secrecy when the discovered what the project was? During the interview process, nobody will tell you what it is. So you move yourself and your family out to New Hampshire, where you're pretty much committed to the job 'cause Kamen's company is the only high tech employer around, and you discover you're working on a scooter. The pay is okay, but, really, was the culture such that you could then say "what are you guys thinking and how do we turn this into a real product?", or are you then stuck building out someone else's vision?
2. How could they miss that the people they showed it to who thought it was cool were all people with obscene amounts of disposable income? Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and John Doerr get together to look at the project, and even in a crowd with those kinds of financial resources one out of three calls "bullshit". Kinda. Surely even with Kamen's pathological secrecy complex there was someone else outside the company they could have found for some honest reaction.
I'm also shocked and amazed at the "it's better to build a manufacturing process from scratch than show anyone else our product" mindset. If you think that you've got one great idea, you're deluding yourself. If, on the other hand, you think you can continually out-innovate and don't need to constantly remind yourself of the novelty of your one great idea by keeping it secret, then you've got a chance in the marketplace.
Unfortunately, there's so much money in the front end of this process that there's no way they can let anyone else take the patented bits and run with it, the royalties the investors will expect are going to be far too high for anyone else to take a derivative product to market, so while there are some interesting things that I can foresee coming out of balancing on two wheels, it's only going to be sometime after the patents run out that we actually see interesting products.