12 ms·

The Trouble with the Segway (2009)

57 points by gadtfly 4y ago

gadtfly 4y ago
Credit: https://nitter.it/torbenjess/status/1558402891030732801 https://nitter.it/torbenjess/status/1558402891030732801 Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=730755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=730755 (2009)
jpm_sd 4y ago
> the company was itself a kind of Segway. It was too easy for them; they were too successful raising money. See also: Google X
fezfight 4y ago
Segway ads showed middle aged people with helmets on. It was dead from the moment they made that choice.
- solardev 4y ago
  Lol, I once saw a group (troop? pack? murder?) of police standing on their Segways in formation, in uniform and lightly padded body armor. It was hard to look tough while they were all in neat little rows, balancing on antique motor scooters. All I could think was "whrrr whrr pew pew whrrrr whrrrrr"... like this photo: https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/segway_1.jpg https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/segway_1.jpg It was impossible to take them seriously. Honestly, lol, I feel for them. Some higher up probably thought that was cheaper than horses and fancier than bikes, so... poor officers.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    I grew up in Manchester, NH where the Segway was developed and I was visiting relatives a little after 2000 and it was so creepy to see cops crusing around on Segways in the parking lot of the abandoned Zayres store. One problem I encountered is that a Segway takes up all the space on a sidewalk with parking meters on it, pedestrians would have to step aside.
    - agundy 4y ago
      I think that’s an interesting take! Segway’s do seem much less maneuverable than a scooter. You can navigate small gaps that a Segway which is wider than shoulder width couldn’t.
  - twic 4y ago
    I saw cops on Segways somewhere in Spain. I asked about it, and the reasoning behind it was that it would make it more likely that people would come up and talk to them. Initially to ask about the goofy vehicle, but then to start complaining about criminal activity they'd seen, or ask for advice, etc. Not being able to take them seriously was the crux of it!
    - solardev 4y ago
      That's a great take on policing!
    - rasz 4y ago
      I saw a tiktok yesterday of police in ?Netherlands or Denmark? patrolling a little county fair on modified Coin-Op rocking horses :)
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    I saw cops on Segways in two major American cities as recently as this month. They failed for the average consumer, but they served a purpose for other sectors. Fortunately, the economic downturn seem to have killed them off for group tours.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      They make sense for cops doing crowd control. You get a little higher then the crowd, stand out, and with the gear cops have walking all day is annoying. I can't think of any reason i'd want one, they don't solve any problem I have.
  - zip1234 4y ago
    Why should cops look tough? I would rather a cop on a segway than sitting in a camaro.
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    I think cops like these things for the same reason they like horses - You can see above everyone's heads when you're standing up on them.
- mkagenius 4y ago
  Maybe a conscious choice for the Ad - as the steep price could only be affordable by them?
vannevar 4y ago
The image was part of the problem, but any new technology has the barrier of looking weird when first introduced (VR anyone?). The real problem was that they were super expensive, and there were cheaper alternatives that did most of what a Segway did. Electric scooters ultimately co-opted the Segway vision because they were much cheaper, handled 90% of the use case, and had a large market of 20-somethings who had ridden Razor scooters into their teens, so it was a familiar experience.
- skybrian 4y ago
  Or possibly e-bikes, which also seem to be popular and I think appeal more to older people?
- dionidium 4y ago
  Segways do look really dorky, but so do the modern scooters. The first time I rode one I felt ridiculous. And my opinion on that hasn't really changed. In fact, I think Graham kind of nailed the feeling of being upright and stationary while piloting a moving object; it feels sort of pompous and aloof. But I'm talking here about how I feel on an electric scooter. So, yes, he's right about that feeling, but he's wrong that it's what held them back. That could have been overcome. Even the price could have been overcome, if the experience were compelling. But it wasn't. They were too big and too heavy -- too impractical, in other words.
probably_wrong 4y ago
The Segway cruised so the electric scooter could race.
startupdiscuss 4y ago
Three points: (1) I don't think this is the reason it did not work. There are lots of things that make you look like a dork -- PCs, airpods etc -- but they took off like rocketships (speaking as someone who adopted these dork items whole heartedly). (2) I agree it is a mystery why Segways didn't work, but I think it remains an unsolved mystery. (3) We have more information now that we have lime and other similar items available. (*) (*) This is actually a point in PG's favor because the lime's are skateboard inspired. But they're not undorky.
- zamalek 4y ago
  > other similar items available We have a 1:1 skateboard Segway: the Onewheel. It healthily solves the dorky problem, and then some. Still, this doesn't seem to be a perfect solution because, in the face of one of the most consumer-hostile manufacturers around, people are turning to dorkier alternatives (such as EUCs). Although few things look as dorky as a Segway, especially when tourists are driving them around single-file.
- eadmund 4y ago
  > There are lots of things that make you look like a dork -- PCs, airpods etc It still blows my mind that actual adults wear AirPods in public. Sometimes actual professional adults who want to be taken seriously (e.g. in business meetings). There is just no way for someone to wear AirPods and look fashionable.
  - inb4_cancelled 4y ago
    Where do you live? AirPods are completely transparent to me, i.e. I don't even consciously notice if a person is wearing them (just like I don't really notice earrings or watches).
novantadue 4y ago
Its really silly. Its not for going long distances and it doesn't solve last mile problem, because well you could just walk 1 mile and wouldn't need to lug 200 pound monstrosity onto the bus. I think the bicycle will never be dethroned as the urban accessory vehicle.
- pklausler 4y ago
  Especially the folding bicycle.
- solardev 4y ago
  Have you ever lived in one of those cities with e-scooters? In just a few months, they were EVERYWHERE in a way that the Segways never were... buses, bike racks, sidewalks, canals, middle of the road... Lots of people who never biked used those scooters instead, because 1) they were heavily subsidized by careless VC money and 2) less sweat than biking. Bike commuting always seemed to me like a niche white thing, like urban hiking on wheels, but those scooters, man... EVERYWHERE.
  - johnfernow 4y ago
    > Bike commuting always seemed to me like a niche white thing Hopefully someone can find some more recent data on it, but as of 2009 [1] the demographics of cyclists in the US mostly matched up with the demographics of the overall population, with a couple of exceptions: white: - % of bike trips: 79% - share of population: 75% black: - % of bike trips: 10% - share of population: 12% hispanic: - % of bike trips: 8% - share of population: 15% asian: - % of bike trips: 3% - share of population: 4% So only hispanics were notably underrepresented, with white, black and asian people being pretty close to their share of the population, and while there was a minor overrepresentation of white people at the time, it was trending toward racial parity (in comparison to 2001 data), and over a decade later I wouldn't be surprised if it's even closer. For income level, the poorest quartile was overrepresented (31%), but the other three quartiles were pretty close (21%, 23%, 25%). So with cycling being far less common in the US compared to other countries with safer infrastructure (0.6% of people bike to work in the US [2] compared to 27% in the Netherlands [3]), you're not going to see many cyclists, and since white people make up a large percentage of the population, if you see a cyclist, there's a fair chance that they'll be white. But as the country becomes more diverse (and hopefully more people begin cycling to work), hopefully that perception will fade, and hopefully the trend toward racial parity for cycling continues. 1. https://grist.org/biking/2011-04-06-race-class-and-the-demographics-of-cycling/ https://grist.org/biking/2011-04-06-race-class-and-the-demog... 2. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/05/younger-workers-in-cities-more-likely-to-bike-to-work.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/05/younger-worke... 3. https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/documenten/reports/2018/04/01/cycling-facts-2018/Cycling+facts+2018.pdf https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/documenten/rep... (edit: formatting)
dylan604 4y ago
And here I thought that it wasn't street legal and also not allowed on the sidewalks was what made the cities not allow them. But now, it's because people look like dorks? Got it.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
I'm not so sure it was the dork factor per se. It seems to me that Segway made it more about them and their technology and less about me. Put another way, it was all about its features and not nearly enough about benefits (to me). To often it was asked, "Why should I care?" or "What's in it for me?" and the answer(s) created more doubt than it resolved.
ars 4y ago
When they first came out I wanted one to commute to work with it. Then I saw the price. And that was the end of that. $7,000 to $10,000 for one - you can buy a car, and pay for years worth of gas for that much.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Segway's control of patents let them (for a while) keep similar but better form factors off the market. Every so often you find a case where patents clearly hold back innovation, such as pre-WWI aviation, and the Segway is one of them.
  - foobarian 4y ago
    It's not that clear cut to me. Without patents, maybe inventors -- both original and follow-on -- would have never bothered investing so much time and treasure, and we would have been behind on average. This is a pretty explicit feature of the patent system. The short delay due to the temporary monopoly is not that important in the grand scheme of things.
    - ars 4y ago
      That's true, but there is no doubt that Segway held back electric vehicle commuting for 2 decades. Imagine how much less traffic and emissions there would be if Segway had put a reasonable price on their product.
      - bluescrn 4y ago
        They could have done even better if they'd also put one wheel in front of the other instead of side-by-side...
        ars 4y ago
        The Segway was meant to be able to travel like a pedestrian, rather than a car.
dinkblam 4y ago
> Someone riding a Segway looks like a dork. Someone riding a Standup-paddle looks like a mega-dork, yet it is a massive success (at least in Europe).
pixelmonkey 4y ago
It's a quirky take. I don't think it was all about optics, though the weird optics certainly didn't help adoption. The real reason the Segway didn't take off, in my opinion, is that it didn't solve any real problem. Walking isn't hard for most people; in fact, for most people, walking is among the most pleasant human activities. It's not particularly fast, but when you're walking somewhere, you aren't that concerned about speed. By being slow, it lets you do other things easily -- talk, listen to music, take in the sights and sounds. No one needed "faster automated walking". What's more, using a Segway to "walk fast" somewhere removes all of the benefits of walking, except the "getting from point A to point B" part. So it's actually worse than the thing it purports to improve. It removes the health benefit; the idle mindlessness of the task (mindless Segway riding is too dangerous); it's more expensive; and, you have to worry about charging, parking, and helmets. The reason e-bikes are now taking off, by contrast, is that they make perfect sense and solve a real problem. Many people enjoy biking, but some people don't enjoy the strenuous parts of mechanical/manual biking: for example, biking up hills. Further, when you're biking, you usually do care about covering some amount of distance in some amount of time, thus an e-bike helps with that. Many modern e-bike models (like the Bosch, Blix, etc.) combine all the benefits of a normal bike with the additional benefit that a battery provides (making it easier to cover longer distances with limited stamina/endurance/practice). The e-bike is what the Segway should have been -- it solves a real problem.
- amelius 4y ago
  > walking is among the most pleasant human activities Yes. And waiting in a line can be much more tiring than just walking.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    This is a very interesting point that I appreciate you making. We humans don’t do a very good job appreciating how weird we are when it comes to the action or productivity per unit of effort. And the guy standing in line playing a game of blitz chess won’t feel exhausted by boredom, but may have less mental bandwidth to send a tenuous email when he gets home from the DMV. Cheers
- 4y ago
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dsmmcken 4y ago
I think it had more to do with price then anything. Adjusted for inflation, it cost $7800 when launched. A motorcycle cost less. The technology of the time would have made it hard to get it much cheaper. Contrast with today, electric scooters are cheap and ubiquitous. They can be purchased for less than $300 and deliver on the same promise.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  That price... You used to be able to get very reasonable used car for that. Nothing special, but full car...
albeebe1 4y ago
I wanted a segway the moment i first saw one, but the price was WAY beyond what i could afford. Thousands of dollars. It wasn't until a couple years ago i was able to buy a ninebot (hoverboard) and attach a 3rd party handle to make my dream come true for a few hundred dollars. I love tooling around my big yard on it, and the kids love it too.
UmYeahNo 4y ago
IIRC there was also a ton of really hyperbolic prognostication when it was still called "Ginger" -- that it would change transportation as we know it, revolutionizing cities, etc etc etc. Then it was released and it was "just a scooter"[0] [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/71902-ginger-unveiledits-a-scooter https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/71902-ginger-unveiledits... And once it was "just a scooter", and it wouldn't really work all that well on city streets, on city sidewalks, you actually could fall off it, it would suck in winter, suck in snow, suck in rain, you couldn't carry it, and all the rest, it lost a ton of hype almost instantly. The self balancing trick didn't overcome the sheer obvious impracticality of it.
- kwanbix 4y ago
  For me, the problem is that it was a 5000 dollars scooter which is about 8000 of today's dollars. Too expensive for my use case.
paulgb 4y ago
> Try this thought experiment and it becomes clear: imagine something that worked like the Segway, but that you rode with one foot in front of the other, like a skateboard. That wouldn't seem nearly as uncool. This turned out to be prescient: I commuted to work today on a vehicle made by Segway (a Ninebot scooter). I'd argue that more of the appeal is that it lets you go as fast as bikes (without breaking a sweat), rather than the dorkiness, but I think the two are related. Admittedly I felt a bit dorky the first time I rode it, but now I'm convinced that it's the ultimate vehicle to have in a city.
tunesmith 4y ago
I wonder if it's the same sort of problem as smart glasses, which were just too obvious-looking to gain traction. Like, if a Segway were slimmed down to basically fit a person profile, and were half the price, would it have been a completely different story?
entropicgravity 4y ago
The were two main problems with the launch of the Segway. First it was just too big and bulky for most sidewalks. And second it was way too expensive for a consumer product. The first part might have been overcome by launching it in Japan where sidewalks are much wider and multi-use (pedestrians and bicycles) is the norm and expected "rules of the sidewalk" are already in place. The cost though would still have been hard to swallow.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Although my experience as a walker with bikes in Japan is that they'll try to navigate through a crowd of people that's almost too dense to walk through. And, while this may be what you mean by "rules of the sidewalk," I also found that I had to be very conscious of making changes of direction without checking behind me lest a bike on the sidewalk clipped me. (It's not like I'm going to randomly change direction in the US but I'm also not going to expect to be hit by a bicycle if I turn right.)
nonameiguess 4y ago
Aside from the price and lack of a real problem it solves, which have been mentioned, the segway also occupies an in-between space where you can't safely ride it on a road, but you're in everyone's way and annoying pedestrians if you use it on a sidewalk (plus, American cities are often pretty terrible about even having sidewalks in places where you might conceivably want to use something like this). I remember we featured this as one of the futuristic new tech pieces at Disneyland's Innoventions, which I used to work at from 2000 to 2002. Virtually nothing we featured there ever really took off. Aside from the segway, we had Sony's AIBO the robotic dog, which was cute and fun to work with, but real dogs are too awesome for any meaningful portion of the market to want to replace them with a robot. We had an Internet-connected toaster that printed a weather report on your toast. Someone clearly had the sense that paper news was on its way out but people largely don't want to be chained to their desk while eating breakfast, but did not anticipate that general-purpose computing devices would become so small and mobile as quickly as they did, and something as niche as only serving the weather would never have a place. We had very early flat-screen TVs back when plasma was the only option and they cost around ten grand for an entry model. Those sort of eventually caught on when they were replaced with better and cheaper technologies that consumers could actually afford. I remember reps coming out and training us to use this for our showcases. It was novel and all, and the basic tech in terms of using weight-shift detection and gyroscopes seems like it should have good uses elsewhere, but I couldn't help but get the sense that, like the current top comment says, my body can already do this, and doesn't require extra storage space, charging, a place to dock, doesn't take up the space in a crowd of a 900 pounder. It's great technology, but the application makes no sense.
- ghaff 4y ago
  There was (and is, albeit to perhaps a somewhat lesser degree) an issue with the fact that anything that isn't a car/motorbike or a pedestrian doesn't really have dedicated infrastructure in most cases. Segway focused pretty heavily on trying to get Segways allowed on sidewalks where they really didn't belong. We've seen the same problem with escooters on sidewalks and of course the issues of general lack of dedicated bike infrastructure are much discussed. But Segways were probably a particularly extreme example of a device that really didn't belong on either sidewalks or busy streets.
kodah 4y ago
I do think personal electronic vehicles (PEV) do fill a need. I have a lot of friends that use these to replace traveling short distances with a car. Like Paul noted about his friends unicycle they don't get much shit for using them. The problem with Segways I think are analogous to when I travel on the sidewalk with my bike. You're too big for most sidewalks and moving fast, so people have to hurriedly shuffle to get out of your way. It's annoying and they respond crudely. Segway I think also attracts further attention because it's a known-expensive device. It doesn't occur to most people that I paid $2k for my bike but that doesn't stop cars from being passive aggressive for, again - taking real estate from them.
moviewise 4y ago
There is a great documentary on Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway Personal Transporter, that I highly recommend: https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/slingshot/ https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/slingshot/ My two cents about the main reason the Segway didn't take off is that many people attacked it out of fear that it would take over sidewalks and put pedestrians in danger. It doesn't fit comfortably in a shared sidewalk, or bike lane, or road with all the other transportation options available. And the high cost made it impossible for it to become the dominant alternative transportation form. However, it works well in warehouses and for policing/security.
Mockapapella 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139615 Some prior discussion from a submission I made on the segway a few months ago
GnarfGnarf 4y ago
One of Segway's problems is that it is an intruder on the sidewalk. You can picture Segway riders yelling "Coming through!" expecting pedestrians to part way for them. Like hell I'll step aside for your overpriced toy. And of course you can't ride it on the street. It has nowhere to go but warehouses and hangars.
Johnny555 4y ago
Why do Segways provoke this reaction? The reason you look like a dork riding a Segway is that you look smug. You don't seem to be working hard enough... Someone riding a motorcycle isn't working any harder It seems more likely that the reason is because the Segway replaces walking, while the motorcycle is generally used to get somewhere that you couldn't walk to.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
Does anyone remember how the (Former) owner of this company met his fate? IMHO segways kind of fell off around the same time that he went flying off of a cliff test-driving some offroad model [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-11416654 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-11416654
base3 4y ago
All true. But still a work of genius getting those gyro stabilisers into a consumer device.
xwdv 4y ago
I don’t get it. Why didn’t they just invent the electric scooter first?
michael1999 4y ago
The Segway was worse than an e-scooter in almost every way. It was wider and needed more clearance around obstacles like curbs, railings, and bollards. It was higher, making dismount more dangerous. Lateral wheels and fixed roll axis (combined with high cog) make sloped surfaces dangerous, and cornering clumsy. It might be better for someone unable to balance a scooter, but would they feel safe with that big step up onto a moving platform? That’s a marginal case likely better served by a seated mobility scooter, which is no worse than a Segway for clearance, cornering, and fixed pitch. Kamen’s self-balancing wheelchairs are neat, but the Segway is a non-solution.

57 points by gadtfly 4y ago

Credit: https://nitter.it/torbenjess/status/1558402891030732801 https://nitter.it/torbenjess/status/1558402891030732801 Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=730755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=730755 (2009)

jpm_sd 4y ago

> the company was itself a kind of Segway. It was too easy for them; they were too successful raising money. See also: Google X

fezfight 4y ago

Segway ads showed middle aged people with helmets on. It was dead from the moment they made that choice.

solardev 4y ago
Lol, I once saw a group (troop? pack? murder?) of police standing on their Segways in formation, in uniform and lightly padded body armor. It was hard to look tough while they were all in neat little rows, balancing on antique motor scooters. All I could think was "whrrr whrr pew pew whrrrr whrrrrr"... like this photo: https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/segway_1.jpg https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/segway_1.jpg It was impossible to take them seriously. Honestly, lol, I feel for them. Some higher up probably thought that was cheaper than horses and fancier than bikes, so... poor officers.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I grew up in Manchester, NH where the Segway was developed and I was visiting relatives a little after 2000 and it was so creepy to see cops crusing around on Segways in the parking lot of the abandoned Zayres store. One problem I encountered is that a Segway takes up all the space on a sidewalk with parking meters on it, pedestrians would have to step aside.
  - agundy 4y ago
    I think that’s an interesting take! Segway’s do seem much less maneuverable than a scooter. You can navigate small gaps that a Segway which is wider than shoulder width couldn’t.
- twic 4y ago
  I saw cops on Segways somewhere in Spain. I asked about it, and the reasoning behind it was that it would make it more likely that people would come up and talk to them. Initially to ask about the goofy vehicle, but then to start complaining about criminal activity they'd seen, or ask for advice, etc. Not being able to take them seriously was the crux of it!
  - solardev 4y ago
    That's a great take on policing!
  - rasz 4y ago
    I saw a tiktok yesterday of police in ?Netherlands or Denmark? patrolling a little county fair on modified Coin-Op rocking horses :)
- reaperducer 4y ago
  I saw cops on Segways in two major American cities as recently as this month. They failed for the average consumer, but they served a purpose for other sectors. Fortunately, the economic downturn seem to have killed them off for group tours.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    They make sense for cops doing crowd control. You get a little higher then the crowd, stand out, and with the gear cops have walking all day is annoying. I can't think of any reason i'd want one, they don't solve any problem I have.
- zip1234 4y ago
  Why should cops look tough? I would rather a cop on a segway than sitting in a camaro.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  I think cops like these things for the same reason they like horses - You can see above everyone's heads when you're standing up on them.
mkagenius 4y ago
Maybe a conscious choice for the Ad - as the steep price could only be affordable by them?

vannevar 4y ago

The image was part of the problem, but any new technology has the barrier of looking weird when first introduced (VR anyone?). The real problem was that they were super expensive, and there were cheaper alternatives that did most of what a Segway did. Electric scooters ultimately co-opted the Segway vision because they were much cheaper, handled 90% of the use case, and had a large market of 20-somethings who had ridden Razor scooters into their teens, so it was a familiar experience.

skybrian 4y ago
Or possibly e-bikes, which also seem to be popular and I think appeal more to older people?
dionidium 4y ago
Segways do look really dorky, but so do the modern scooters. The first time I rode one I felt ridiculous. And my opinion on that hasn't really changed. In fact, I think Graham kind of nailed the feeling of being upright and stationary while piloting a moving object; it feels sort of pompous and aloof. But I'm talking here about how I feel on an electric scooter. So, yes, he's right about that feeling, but he's wrong that it's what held them back. That could have been overcome. Even the price could have been overcome, if the experience were compelling. But it wasn't. They were too big and too heavy -- too impractical, in other words.

probably_wrong 4y ago

The Segway cruised so the electric scooter could race.

startupdiscuss 4y ago

Three points: (1) I don't think this is the reason it did not work. There are lots of things that make you look like a dork -- PCs, airpods etc -- but they took off like rocketships (speaking as someone who adopted these dork items whole heartedly). (2) I agree it is a mystery why Segways didn't work, but I think it remains an unsolved mystery. (3) We have more information now that we have lime and other similar items available. (*) (*) This is actually a point in PG's favor because the lime's are skateboard inspired. But they're not undorky.

zamalek 4y ago
> other similar items available We have a 1:1 skateboard Segway: the Onewheel. It healthily solves the dorky problem, and then some. Still, this doesn't seem to be a perfect solution because, in the face of one of the most consumer-hostile manufacturers around, people are turning to dorkier alternatives (such as EUCs). Although few things look as dorky as a Segway, especially when tourists are driving them around single-file.
eadmund 4y ago
> There are lots of things that make you look like a dork -- PCs, airpods etc It still blows my mind that actual adults wear AirPods in public. Sometimes actual professional adults who want to be taken seriously (e.g. in business meetings). There is just no way for someone to wear AirPods and look fashionable.
- inb4_cancelled 4y ago
  Where do you live? AirPods are completely transparent to me, i.e. I don't even consciously notice if a person is wearing them (just like I don't really notice earrings or watches).

novantadue 4y ago

Its really silly. Its not for going long distances and it doesn't solve last mile problem, because well you could just walk 1 mile and wouldn't need to lug 200 pound monstrosity onto the bus. I think the bicycle will never be dethroned as the urban accessory vehicle.

pklausler 4y ago
Especially the folding bicycle.
solardev 4y ago
Have you ever lived in one of those cities with e-scooters? In just a few months, they were EVERYWHERE in a way that the Segways never were... buses, bike racks, sidewalks, canals, middle of the road... Lots of people who never biked used those scooters instead, because 1) they were heavily subsidized by careless VC money and 2) less sweat than biking. Bike commuting always seemed to me like a niche white thing, like urban hiking on wheels, but those scooters, man... EVERYWHERE.
- johnfernow 4y ago
  > Bike commuting always seemed to me like a niche white thing Hopefully someone can find some more recent data on it, but as of 2009 [1] the demographics of cyclists in the US mostly matched up with the demographics of the overall population, with a couple of exceptions: white: - % of bike trips: 79% - share of population: 75% black: - % of bike trips: 10% - share of population: 12% hispanic: - % of bike trips: 8% - share of population: 15% asian: - % of bike trips: 3% - share of population: 4% So only hispanics were notably underrepresented, with white, black and asian people being pretty close to their share of the population, and while there was a minor overrepresentation of white people at the time, it was trending toward racial parity (in comparison to 2001 data), and over a decade later I wouldn't be surprised if it's even closer. For income level, the poorest quartile was overrepresented (31%), but the other three quartiles were pretty close (21%, 23%, 25%). So with cycling being far less common in the US compared to other countries with safer infrastructure (0.6% of people bike to work in the US [2] compared to 27% in the Netherlands [3]), you're not going to see many cyclists, and since white people make up a large percentage of the population, if you see a cyclist, there's a fair chance that they'll be white. But as the country becomes more diverse (and hopefully more people begin cycling to work), hopefully that perception will fade, and hopefully the trend toward racial parity for cycling continues. 1. https://grist.org/biking/2011-04-06-race-class-and-the-demographics-of-cycling/ https://grist.org/biking/2011-04-06-race-class-and-the-demog... 2. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/05/younger-workers-in-cities-more-likely-to-bike-to-work.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/05/younger-worke... 3. https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/documenten/reports/2018/04/01/cycling-facts-2018/Cycling+facts+2018.pdf https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/documenten/rep... (edit: formatting)

dylan604 4y ago

And here I thought that it wasn't street legal and also not allowed on the sidewalks was what made the cities not allow them. But now, it's because people look like dorks? Got it.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

I'm not so sure it was the dork factor per se. It seems to me that Segway made it more about them and their technology and less about me. Put another way, it was all about its features and not nearly enough about benefits (to me). To often it was asked, "Why should I care?" or "What's in it for me?" and the answer(s) created more doubt than it resolved.

ars 4y ago

When they first came out I wanted one to commute to work with it. Then I saw the price. And that was the end of that. $7,000 to $10,000 for one - you can buy a car, and pay for years worth of gas for that much.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Segway's control of patents let them (for a while) keep similar but better form factors off the market. Every so often you find a case where patents clearly hold back innovation, such as pre-WWI aviation, and the Segway is one of them.
- foobarian 4y ago
  It's not that clear cut to me. Without patents, maybe inventors -- both original and follow-on -- would have never bothered investing so much time and treasure, and we would have been behind on average. This is a pretty explicit feature of the patent system. The short delay due to the temporary monopoly is not that important in the grand scheme of things.
  - ars 4y ago
    That's true, but there is no doubt that Segway held back electric vehicle commuting for 2 decades. Imagine how much less traffic and emissions there would be if Segway had put a reasonable price on their product.
    - bluescrn 4y ago
      They could have done even better if they'd also put one wheel in front of the other instead of side-by-side...
      - ars 4y ago
        The Segway was meant to be able to travel like a pedestrian, rather than a car.

dinkblam 4y ago

> Someone riding a Segway looks like a dork. Someone riding a Standup-paddle looks like a mega-dork, yet it is a massive success (at least in Europe).

pixelmonkey 4y ago

It's a quirky take. I don't think it was all about optics, though the weird optics certainly didn't help adoption. The real reason the Segway didn't take off, in my opinion, is that it didn't solve any real problem. Walking isn't hard for most people; in fact, for most people, walking is among the most pleasant human activities. It's not particularly fast, but when you're walking somewhere, you aren't that concerned about speed. By being slow, it lets you do other things easily -- talk, listen to music, take in the sights and sounds. No one needed "faster automated walking". What's more, using a Segway to "walk fast" somewhere removes all of the benefits of walking, except the "getting from point A to point B" part. So it's actually worse than the thing it purports to improve. It removes the health benefit; the idle mindlessness of the task (mindless Segway riding is too dangerous); it's more expensive; and, you have to worry about charging, parking, and helmets. The reason e-bikes are now taking off, by contrast, is that they make perfect sense and solve a real problem. Many people enjoy biking, but some people don't enjoy the strenuous parts of mechanical/manual biking: for example, biking up hills. Further, when you're biking, you usually do care about covering some amount of distance in some amount of time, thus an e-bike helps with that. Many modern e-bike models (like the Bosch, Blix, etc.) combine all the benefits of a normal bike with the additional benefit that a battery provides (making it easier to cover longer distances with limited stamina/endurance/practice). The e-bike is what the Segway should have been -- it solves a real problem.

amelius 4y ago
> walking is among the most pleasant human activities Yes. And waiting in a line can be much more tiring than just walking.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  This is a very interesting point that I appreciate you making. We humans don’t do a very good job appreciating how weird we are when it comes to the action or productivity per unit of effort. And the guy standing in line playing a game of blitz chess won’t feel exhausted by boredom, but may have less mental bandwidth to send a tenuous email when he gets home from the DMV. Cheers
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dsmmcken 4y ago

I think it had more to do with price then anything. Adjusted for inflation, it cost $7800 when launched. A motorcycle cost less. The technology of the time would have made it hard to get it much cheaper. Contrast with today, electric scooters are cheap and ubiquitous. They can be purchased for less than $300 and deliver on the same promise.

Ekaros 4y ago
That price... You used to be able to get very reasonable used car for that. Nothing special, but full car...

albeebe1 4y ago

I wanted a segway the moment i first saw one, but the price was WAY beyond what i could afford. Thousands of dollars. It wasn't until a couple years ago i was able to buy a ninebot (hoverboard) and attach a 3rd party handle to make my dream come true for a few hundred dollars. I love tooling around my big yard on it, and the kids love it too.

UmYeahNo 4y ago

IIRC there was also a ton of really hyperbolic prognostication when it was still called "Ginger" -- that it would change transportation as we know it, revolutionizing cities, etc etc etc. Then it was released and it was "just a scooter"[0] [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/71902-ginger-unveiledits-a-scooter https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/71902-ginger-unveiledits... And once it was "just a scooter", and it wouldn't really work all that well on city streets, on city sidewalks, you actually could fall off it, it would suck in winter, suck in snow, suck in rain, you couldn't carry it, and all the rest, it lost a ton of hype almost instantly. The self balancing trick didn't overcome the sheer obvious impracticality of it.

kwanbix 4y ago
For me, the problem is that it was a 5000 dollars scooter which is about 8000 of today's dollars. Too expensive for my use case.

paulgb 4y ago

> Try this thought experiment and it becomes clear: imagine something that worked like the Segway, but that you rode with one foot in front of the other, like a skateboard. That wouldn't seem nearly as uncool. This turned out to be prescient: I commuted to work today on a vehicle made by Segway (a Ninebot scooter). I'd argue that more of the appeal is that it lets you go as fast as bikes (without breaking a sweat), rather than the dorkiness, but I think the two are related. Admittedly I felt a bit dorky the first time I rode it, but now I'm convinced that it's the ultimate vehicle to have in a city.

tunesmith 4y ago

I wonder if it's the same sort of problem as smart glasses, which were just too obvious-looking to gain traction. Like, if a Segway were slimmed down to basically fit a person profile, and were half the price, would it have been a completely different story?

entropicgravity 4y ago

The were two main problems with the launch of the Segway. First it was just too big and bulky for most sidewalks. And second it was way too expensive for a consumer product. The first part might have been overcome by launching it in Japan where sidewalks are much wider and multi-use (pedestrians and bicycles) is the norm and expected "rules of the sidewalk" are already in place. The cost though would still have been hard to swallow.

ghaff 4y ago
Although my experience as a walker with bikes in Japan is that they'll try to navigate through a crowd of people that's almost too dense to walk through. And, while this may be what you mean by "rules of the sidewalk," I also found that I had to be very conscious of making changes of direction without checking behind me lest a bike on the sidewalk clipped me. (It's not like I'm going to randomly change direction in the US but I'm also not going to expect to be hit by a bicycle if I turn right.)

nonameiguess 4y ago

Aside from the price and lack of a real problem it solves, which have been mentioned, the segway also occupies an in-between space where you can't safely ride it on a road, but you're in everyone's way and annoying pedestrians if you use it on a sidewalk (plus, American cities are often pretty terrible about even having sidewalks in places where you might conceivably want to use something like this). I remember we featured this as one of the futuristic new tech pieces at Disneyland's Innoventions, which I used to work at from 2000 to 2002. Virtually nothing we featured there ever really took off. Aside from the segway, we had Sony's AIBO the robotic dog, which was cute and fun to work with, but real dogs are too awesome for any meaningful portion of the market to want to replace them with a robot. We had an Internet-connected toaster that printed a weather report on your toast. Someone clearly had the sense that paper news was on its way out but people largely don't want to be chained to their desk while eating breakfast, but did not anticipate that general-purpose computing devices would become so small and mobile as quickly as they did, and something as niche as only serving the weather would never have a place. We had very early flat-screen TVs back when plasma was the only option and they cost around ten grand for an entry model. Those sort of eventually caught on when they were replaced with better and cheaper technologies that consumers could actually afford. I remember reps coming out and training us to use this for our showcases. It was novel and all, and the basic tech in terms of using weight-shift detection and gyroscopes seems like it should have good uses elsewhere, but I couldn't help but get the sense that, like the current top comment says, my body can already do this, and doesn't require extra storage space, charging, a place to dock, doesn't take up the space in a crowd of a 900 pounder. It's great technology, but the application makes no sense.

ghaff 4y ago
There was (and is, albeit to perhaps a somewhat lesser degree) an issue with the fact that anything that isn't a car/motorbike or a pedestrian doesn't really have dedicated infrastructure in most cases. Segway focused pretty heavily on trying to get Segways allowed on sidewalks where they really didn't belong. We've seen the same problem with escooters on sidewalks and of course the issues of general lack of dedicated bike infrastructure are much discussed. But Segways were probably a particularly extreme example of a device that really didn't belong on either sidewalks or busy streets.

kodah 4y ago

I do think personal electronic vehicles (PEV) do fill a need. I have a lot of friends that use these to replace traveling short distances with a car. Like Paul noted about his friends unicycle they don't get much shit for using them. The problem with Segways I think are analogous to when I travel on the sidewalk with my bike. You're too big for most sidewalks and moving fast, so people have to hurriedly shuffle to get out of your way. It's annoying and they respond crudely. Segway I think also attracts further attention because it's a known-expensive device. It doesn't occur to most people that I paid $2k for my bike but that doesn't stop cars from being passive aggressive for, again - taking real estate from them.

moviewise 4y ago

There is a great documentary on Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway Personal Transporter, that I highly recommend: https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/slingshot/ https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/slingshot/ My two cents about the main reason the Segway didn't take off is that many people attacked it out of fear that it would take over sidewalks and put pedestrians in danger. It doesn't fit comfortably in a shared sidewalk, or bike lane, or road with all the other transportation options available. And the high cost made it impossible for it to become the dominant alternative transportation form. However, it works well in warehouses and for policing/security.

Mockapapella 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139615 Some prior discussion from a submission I made on the segway a few months ago

GnarfGnarf 4y ago

One of Segway's problems is that it is an intruder on the sidewalk. You can picture Segway riders yelling "Coming through!" expecting pedestrians to part way for them. Like hell I'll step aside for your overpriced toy. And of course you can't ride it on the street. It has nowhere to go but warehouses and hangars.

Johnny555 4y ago

Why do Segways provoke this reaction? The reason you look like a dork riding a Segway is that you look smug. You don't seem to be working hard enough... Someone riding a motorcycle isn't working any harder It seems more likely that the reason is because the Segway replaces walking, while the motorcycle is generally used to get somewhere that you couldn't walk to.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

Does anyone remember how the (Former) owner of this company met his fate? IMHO segways kind of fell off around the same time that he went flying off of a cliff test-driving some offroad model [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-11416654 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-11416654

base3 4y ago

All true. But still a work of genius getting those gyro stabilisers into a consumer device.

xwdv 4y ago

I don’t get it. Why didn’t they just invent the electric scooter first?

michael1999 4y ago

The Segway was worse than an e-scooter in almost every way. It was wider and needed more clearance around obstacles like curbs, railings, and bollards. It was higher, making dismount more dangerous. Lateral wheels and fixed roll axis (combined with high cog) make sloped surfaces dangerous, and cornering clumsy. It might be better for someone unable to balance a scooter, but would they feel safe with that big step up onto a moving platform? That’s a marginal case likely better served by a seated mobility scooter, which is no worse than a Segway for clearance, cornering, and fixed pitch. Kamen’s self-balancing wheelchairs are neat, but the Segway is a non-solution.