Toyota Announces the Winglet, Wannabe Segway Killer

Various gadget/toy venues are writing about the Toyota Winglet, a diminutive Segway-like personal transporter. (Toyota took over Sony's robot division a year back.) It comes in three sizes and offers about a third the speed and a quarter the range of the Segway; on the upside, it charges in an hour vs. Segway's 10 hours. Wired writes: "The Winglet is the first gadget to duplicate the celebrated, and often mocked, navigation system of the Segway Transporter."

Comments

Re:Range

[roguetrick]

No, the kids got it, they just didn't understand who let that pretentious asshole in the theater.

The "sweaty" excuse against bicycles

[DrYak]

I can step off and start work right away without worrying about starting the day covered in sweat and having a wrinkled uniform (no showers available).

That is the most stupid and lame excuse against using bicycles, that nevertheless I keep hearing the whole time.

This excuse is completely irrelevant because :
1- The amount of sweat you will emit is highly correlated with the amount of training. Of course the first day you will sweat. But after a week, the effort will be almost unnoticeable. Your nice uniform *WON'T* be wrinkled anymore. At all. (unless you have to bike for something like 60km to get to work...)
Disclaimer : I speak of personal experience. I'm not the typical overweight geek.

2- There are these wonderful thing called "electric pedal assist" which can offload a certain part of the pedalling effort to a small electric motor (usually embed inside the back wheel - which fits into a normal bike).
I'm not speaking about a whole electric scooter. But a much simpler system which detects when you pedal and just gives a little extra omph to make the pedalling much more easy and less exhausting and sweat-making. As the system adapts to the demand, it's really a "use it as much as you need and put your own energy to the rest as much as you can" situation. Perfect I you *don't* have the bike training yet and are afraid about being too much sweaty at work.
The whole modification to a classic bike (the back wheel with embed motor + removable battery pack + charging station from mains at home) still costs a fraction of the price of a segway.

Disclaimer : Ok, this isn't something I use. I got well at riding my bike when those became popular so I didn't need them at all. But for the couple of times I tried my friends' it looks nice and offload the effort nicely.

Also I can work my guts out at a physically demanding job all day, knowing I don't need to spare some energy for a bike ride home.

Generally, the two excuses are mutually excluding. If you have a hard physical work, nobody will pay attention if you're already sweaty in the morning and shower should be available.
But generally, those people people having physically demanding jobs aren't those who are the most in need of doing some sport anyway.

But biggest part of the /. crowd, the "lifting my remote-controller-holding-hand away from the keyboard was my biggest effort today" overwighted types would definitely gain something by trying to ride a bike once in a while.

I dont' want these in shopping crowds either

[Joce640k]

To paraphrase: The sort of people who would buy these should on no account be allowed to buy them.

I understand segways at trade fairs where people have to go from one end of a large trade hall to the other all day long without wasting much time. Also people who work in large warehouses, etc.

OTOH the sort of people who would buy them as "personal transport" need to get off their fat asses more often. Seriously.