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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.
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>>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
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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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 $1000.
-BbT
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I made a post that, in order for it to be successful, it must do the following.
1) Be an order of magnitude cheaper
2) Break down into a package small and light enough to carry on public transportation
Otherwise, it's just an expensive glorified electric scooter
I stand by my original accessment...
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Only here would a caveat about drunken Segway jousting be modded "informative."
These tours are also conveniently known as the "tourists who we will beat up and mug" pre-screening process........
... the cost of these things is impractically high right now. Once competition is allowed to play, we'll see hundreds of knock-offs from other companies at rates that make them practical. By that time, they'll be even better with fuel cells and better batteries.
Someone made a "segway" with the old Lego MindStorms kit :
http://www.teamhassenplug.org/robots/legway/
I can see the Segway being expensive for being an electric scooter, but 5000$USD is way too expensive.
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 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.
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.
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.