8 ms·
Segway was supposed to change the world. Two decades later, it just might
- readhn 8y agoohh another hot air bubble product.. "electric scooters" ... that will pass too. what we really need is updated modern public transportion network, high speed electric trains/ efficient transportation hubs..... not bicycles and scooters LMAO !! This is a 21st century! Why are we going backwards? They make a good toy though.
- Svexav 8y agoYou expect a high speed train station outside your front door? Awfully optimistic of you.
- Retric 8y agoLittle need for high speed rail when you’re talking about daily commuting. Personally may last five apartments have all been in short as in under five minute walking distance of a subway, that’s the advantage of living in high density areas.
- Lobsterosity 8y agoCome to Detroit where our only public transport options are "SMART" (slow) buses, the Detroit People Mover (a joke that barely circles a small area downtown), and the newly built Q-line that travels only a few miles straight back and forth. IMO the addition of birds and limes has been really nice.
- barrkel 8y agoI live in London, and I can tell you that you pay significantly more in order to be within 5 minutes of the tube. And some people want to have children and don't want them out on the streets in the city, so they pay significantly more in order to be close to fast rail links.
- all2 8y agoHigh speed rail would allow people who live in Milwaukee and Madison to commute to Chicago, and vice versa. What is a 3 hour drive would become a 45 minute commute, which is reasonable considering the distance. Cost of living drops off as you leave metro areas. Like another responder to your comment noted: people pay for convenience. I'd say cost is a disadvantage of living in a high-density area.
- Retric 8y agoHigh speed rail can’t do multiple quick stops. So, you can get to a city’s center with it, but acceleration and deceleration times plus station time means you are stuck with subways for in city use. You can’t use high speed rail and and a subway system to move very far and still have a 45 minuet commute. So, now you need to live near HSR and your job also needs to be next to HSR in order for that trip to work.
- m4x 8y agoIf you live, work and shop within five minutes of subways then you have no real use for a scooter. That isn't the case for most people, however. We can't all move to the big city.
- Retric 8y agoThat’s a fair point, but they are also rather useless in the ultra low density country or extreme urban sprawl. They are really only extremely spread out US style cities. Where, cars are almost useless, but you can’t really walk to everything useful.
- ehnto 8y agoIt's a ridiculous headline that's for sure. Electrified personal transport can help with the last mile but it's of no use if you never get to the last mile without a car. Also, it's a scooter, "change the world"? If they mean by changing it from having x scooters on the market to x+1 scooters on the market then yes.
- xapata 8y agoCars aren't the only way of getting to "the last mile." Closing the last mile has been public transit systems' problem for a long time. Cars changed the world. If scooters change the way people think about public transit and distance within cities, it could very well change how people consider where to live and how to organize cities.
- ehnto 8y agoI think you may have misunderstood. I want cars gone. But the public transit system isn't good enough in many if not most places to warrant that, regardless of the last mile, so we should fix that first. Fixing that would change the world (incrementally). Scooters have been around for literally decades, even electric scooters have been around for a while. Changing people to accept a bit of physical effort to get to their job, be it cycling, walking or electric scootering, is probably a great thing, but it won't solve the underlying lack of infrastructure. You can't organise around infrastructure that isn't there. In cities where it is there, people use it even without electric scooters and people already move to be close to good public transport.
- m4x 8y agoHow would you fix public transport though? Public transport is terrible in my city, but it's really because the population is too low to support anything better rather than because of any particular problem with the service. There's no fix, except to somehow increase population density by a factor of five. Any proposed improvements are likely to take years or decades to complete, too. Meanwhile you can stop driving and start scooting tomorrow. It's also worth noting that scooters are great for much more than just the last mile. I commute 20 km per day on my scooter.
- notlion 8y agoPersonal electric vehicles are completely symbiotic with public transit, that's why they're called "last mile" vehicles; because you take mass transit to within a mile or two, and then hop on your scooter, e-board, EUC to go the rest of the way.
- goatlover 8y agoWouldn’t walking or cycling be healthier?
- kerbs 8y agoA bicycle is difficult to bring on many forms of public transportation, and can require a change of clothes. Scooters can fit on a luggage rack. Walking is much slower, of course.
- m4x 8y agoI enjoy walking and cycling, but not for my commute. It takes an hour to walk vs. 20 mins to cycle or scoot. If I cycle I arrive unavoidably sweaty. My scooter is fantastic for commuting. When I want to walk, I go to the lake with my wife.
- cimmanom 8y agoIt’s faster than walking. And just try cycling in a skirt suit.
- 27182818284 8y agoI'm not with you on this one. I don't live in California and the amount of electric scooters I've suddenly seen out of nowhere is crazy. It might be a fad, but unlike you, I'm more like 30% thinking it is a fad vs 100%. My reasoning: * Batteries have gotten better than even the basic Segway days * The scooters are portable. You can fold them and take them in to your dorm, apartment, etc, preventing theft. A lot of work places won't complain about you charging them at work either * The entry level price is so much lower. I never saw a casual person on a Segway, but I see casual people on the electric scooter bandwagon already * There is also a large subset of folks that had Razor scooters. I wasn't part of that, but I can understand them being more willing to adopt if they had previously used unpowered scooters. * Running in to someone might be a problem on San Francisco sidewalks, but it isn't on, say, ISU's sidewalks.
- crehn 8y agoSame in Korea. Electric scooters everywhere. Even scooter rentals are popping up around the city.
- diogenescynic 8y agoKorea is a lot more dense than California though and Korea has better public transportation to complement/supplement the scooters. The scooters are only going to work for people in denser cities. We need more high speed rail and mass transit options. These scooters are only a partial solution to a much larger and complex problem.
- readhn 8y agoexactly. america is not just NYC&SF. Electric scooter is not going to solve bigger transportation infrastructure problem the one that really needs to be solved. I see at as a supplementary mode of transportation that will be MAYBE overall a 1% of the total solution.
- cauldron 8y agoCharging inside your house is very dangerous, especially in NA where most houses are wooden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EljeP5XmETA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EljeP5XmETA
- briandear 8y agoI ride my EcoReco electric scooter from Mountain View to Cupertino every day. It’s great and I don’t have to wait on buses. Are you going to spend billions to run a train from Mountain View to Cupertino? In the meantime, I have a heck of a fun commute.
- icelancer 8y ago"What we really need is [large project x] and [public good y] so therefore no one should work on [other project z]" is a stale argument and even if some benevolent dictator got their way, wouldn't even work.
- village-idiot 8y agoLast mile problem, always the Achilles heel of public transit.
- toast0 8y agoElectric scooters are easier to take on public transit than bicycles, and enable more trips without cars for people who are electric scooter close to a transit route on both sides. More than anything else, people actually taking public transit enables more spending on public transit, and more spending on building public transit accessible housing and workplaces, both of which will again encourage more use of public transit.
- gwern 8y agoOne thing I didn't understand here was, what exactly does Segway have to do with electric scooters in the first place? Why do scooters need the fancy self-balancing tech from the original Segway, or, if that's not what it's doing, what are they doing? Surely it's not something as lame as having a bunch of patents on the idea of sticking a battery in a scooter?
- nrp 8y agoSegway/Ninebot build a range of personal transportation products. All of them except the powered kickscooters are self-balancing in some form: http://www.segway.com/products/consumer-lifestyle http://www.segway.com/products/consumer-lifestyle
- whoisjuan 8y agoAll Lime scooters I have seen are Segway, and Lime is one of the top competitors in this space.
- shawn 8y agoOne Wheels are better anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4_736KQyeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4_736KQyeQ Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbqWFVm9cD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbqWFVm9cD0
- 393339 8y agoI think Segway is just the brand, seems to just have a button for acceleration. This article was a real eye opener for me, the Segway is just a horrible product. They sold 10x more kick scooters in a year than they ever sold Segways. What I got from the article, was that a Segway is a 3 wheeled car with a joystick in stead of a steering wheel. The kick scooter is just easier to use, simpler to make, cheaper, more efficient, more reliable, more stable and safer. This might be a fad, but it's much closer to a usable product than the Segway will ever be.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- justinator 8y agoI really don't know what's happening with Segway, but an antidote: I was at the grocery store, and an older lady was riding one of those cheap-looking hover board type contraptions inside the store - except that there was a post, and seat attached to it. She was whizzing all over the place on it with ease and grace. It was an excellent sight.
- sjwright 8y ago> an antidote: Definitely an antidote to making them “cool”.
- ukulele 8y agoRegarding the other comment: you probably meant "anecdote"
- sjwright 8y agoThat's right, that's definitely what he meant. It's funny how mobile operating systems have so dramatically changed the very nature of a typo into an autocorrected "wordo". As for my other post—like all comedy, not everyone is going to like every joke. It amuses me that some people think that because they didn't recognise the comedy genius (perhaps it wasn't clever enough) their reaction is to get the endorphins hit that comes from hitting the down-vote button. Personally I'm glad that I was able to contribute to the regulation of other people's brain chemistry. Hopefully I can make more people feel better about themselves with this post too. Press that button, people!
- justinator 8y agoHaha! Thanks, I did! Sometimes I think I have a mild speech impediment; other times, it's probably my brain's internal autocorrect before it comes out of my mouth (or out of my fingers, as it is)
- rsync 8y ago"She was whizzing all over the place on it with ease and grace. It was an excellent sight." I was in a country other than the United States and I saw an older lady run to catch a bus. She was easily 65, maybe 70. It was neither interesting nor noteworthy to any of the other (swiss) people on the street with her. Walking is the universal medicine and we live with an enormous burden of health, fitness and longevity problems (including obesity, diabetes, "lower back problems", knee and hip issues, etc.) due to the car culture that we live in and the related near refusal to walk anywhere. No, this was not an excellent sight - it's the sign of a sick society that will do anything to avoid the simple, free and easy remedy to almost all of their problems.
- touristtam 8y agoIs Ninebot not owned by Xiaomi? https://www.mi.com/global/mi-electric-scooter/ https://www.mi.com/global/mi-electric-scooter/
- ihuman 8y agoXiaomi has invested in Ninebot https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ninebot-xiaomi-investment/xiaomi-backed-chinese-firm-acquires-iconic-scooter-maker-segway-idUSKBN0N60GN20150415 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ninebot-xiaomi-investment...
- RyanShook 8y agoThey also make an electric scooter that competes directly with Segway/Ninebot https://amzn.to/2RvYp4b https://amzn.to/2RvYp4b
- RyanShook 8y agoNot sure about the article’s “world changing” claim but I do love electric scooters. The Segway ES1 is $600 on Amazon - https://amzn.to/2SH2zYh https://amzn.to/2SH2zYh
- village-idiot 8y agoReplacing the car for last mile transit is world changing, if it happens.
- davidmr 8y agoOther than for people with limited mobility, can you help me understand why people think this is so? To me, it seems like evolution solved this problem for us when we became bipedal. It’s entirely possible (even likely) that I could just be a crank, but I genuinely don’t see the point of scooter rentals for healthy, sufficiently mobile people.
- Laforet 8y agoA fit person can walk at the speed of 3 mph or 5 kph, anything faster would be in jogging/running category. A electric scooter can easily each a speed of 12 mph or 20 kph - 4 times faster which is quite significant. A 10 minute walk becomes just under 3 minutes on a scooter, and the time saving adds up over longer distance: Suppose you live 3 miles from the closest bus/train stop, it would be an hour on foot which is not practical for daily commute; 15 minutes on a scooter, however, is much more manageable and be competitive with driving.
- njarboe 8y agoA scooter has about the same functionality as an e-bike but can go on sidewalks without seeming nearly as threatening. Use in bike lanes, go 4 times as fast as walking, no sweating like a bicycle, and more portable and much cheaper than an e-bike. If my commute is a mile from a train station on both ends, that is 40 minutes of walking a day. Probably good for your health, but cutting that down to 10 minutes by using a scooter could make trains much more useful for many people. Make it 2 miles on each end, then a bicycle is really needed. Bulky and not allowed on many subways. e-scooter could work just as well. Plus they are pretty fun to ride.
- analogmemory 8y agoI'm surprised they didn't talk about the crowdfunding campaign they have going for their new e-skate, The Drift https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-drift-w1-experience-segway-s-new-age-e-skates#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-drift-w1-experience-s...
- telltruth 8y agoWow. Is this already copied by the Chinese cloners? https://www.amazon.com/Koowheel-Electric-Balancing-Hovershoes-Freeline/dp/B07CZV53F1 https://www.amazon.com/Koowheel-Electric-Balancing-Hovershoe...
- analogmemory 8y agoNot really? It feels like they basically saw hover boards and then split them in two. If anything Segway probably saw a market opportunity.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoScooters may be handy for people who don't live where there's significant snow or ice on the ground for months at a time. I see all kinds of people riding exercise bikes in gyms. May they should switch to non-electric scooting instead.
- devit 8y agoHow do they compare to bikes for city transit? Also, the prices of Segway kickscooters from Bird and Lime (1$ + 0.15$/min) seem way higher than Mobike's prices (around $10/month, unlimited rides).