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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I wonder what the stats are in a more diverse city, like LA? Population wise its 30% white and 50% latino now. Anecdotally I see a lot of latinos riding bikes when I commute to work.
Interesting stats in this article anyhow, especially about how effective bike lanes are at encouraging ridership among underrepresented demographics:
IMO the e-scooter app + sharing model solved the parking and storage problem in a way that Segway did not. You don't need a bike room at work or secure bike parking at the restaurant / movie theater / bar if you can park it anywhere and get a different one to ride home. Also allows one-way trips where you use another mode of transport to get home.
Downside: you might not have immediate availability, but you can always walk a block or two to find another scooter.
(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.
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.
> 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.
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).
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.
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.
Yeah, people will put up with a lot of "looking silly" for something that solves a real problem. Umbrellas arguably look silly, but it's well worth it to not be drenched. I used to be told I looked dorky for wearing a bicycle helmet, but the world (or at least my region) seems to have come around to the idea that avoiding brain damage is a pretty high upside.
Spending a substantial amount of money and going to the effort of storing a large object just to be able to get someplace faster (but still not as fast as driving), just isn't worth it to most people.
Segway cost $5k early on, which impeded adoption. Then it gained an image as a device for tourists and obese cops (deserved or not, that was the image in the 00s). So even when prices dropped, it wasn't going to be readily adopted by the masses. Electric scooters are electric versions of a thing many people (in the US, not sure about other countries) had used since their childhood. The worst image they carried was that of youthfulness, and maybe the dickish college students who stashed their foldable scooter in the desk next to them. And the cost was much lower much earlier in their life, plus not tied to a single brand or manufacturer. Which is probably one of the reasons that their price was lower (competition is helpful).
They were conspicuous consumption without being high enough price to be a signal of wealth. Most people could see a way to afford a Segway, so it didn't signal weath to anyone else, but they were expensive enough that most people would think twice.
The social cost of looking like a dork is higher than the social cost of riding a child's conveyance (razor-style scooter). The childishness of the scooter also makes it less intimidating to people.
+ Have a reasonable price point. Hundreds, versus thousands.
+ Operates in the wet. Including the very wet, like hail. You can even test it offroad without necessarily needing to use the offroad equipment.
+ Familiarity. You don't need to learn to ride them, because it was likely you'd already ridden something similar.
+ It's easy to safely fall, when you inevitably make a mistake. You may not even hit the ground.
+ You can go a reasonable speed - you're not looking to replace walking, but jogging.
+ More familiarity. The imagery of riding a scooter is more of playing around and having fun, than dorkyness or awkwardness, because the device looks unfamiliar and like a new experience. Which makes you more likely to try it, at least once. More people trying it "just once" the more no one notices if you pick it up, because it becomes common.
> Familiarity. You don't need to learn to ride them, because it was likely you'd already ridden something similar.
Really? I cannot ride a two-wheeled scooter (electric or otherwise) for the life of me. I make it about 4 feet before falling over. I think my record distance is 10 feet.
I wouldn't even think of trying to ride one. I didn't grow up riding bikes (narrow country lanes) and still wouldn't think of riding a bike in traffic.
For some reason I can ride a bicycle just fine, but the stand-up scooters baffle my sense of balance. I think part of it is the smaller wheels, but that can't be the only thing...
If you're unable to balance on a scooter, then it seems highly likely that the Segway, which operates primarily on a pivot point, would be similarly difficult for you, if not much worse.
Scooters also fit better with road patterns. Segways are too big, perhaps too fast for the pavements (certainly at 10 mph). But way too slow for the road.
Escooters move at similar speeds to bikes so fit in the same niche. They are also narrower, and this matters on roads.
+ Lower weight. You can pick up many electric scooters and carry them up/down stairs, indoors, etc. Often weigh around 30 pounds or so. Segways weigh over 80 pounds.
I see a lot of people saying "price" and "they look stupid," and I'm not saying those things are wrong, but it seems pretty obvious to me that size/design was a major factor. Segways are clunky and heavy. Scooters are light and nimble. Products in this space need to be easy to carry up a flight of stairs and they need to be as unobtrusive as possible when dropped in an entryway. The Segway fails both tests.
They are cheap and plentiful. On every street corner for like a dollar a ride plus time. They are also light weight. A segway is huge. It's awkward to ride for first timers compared to an intuitive scooter. Its expensive. There aren't segways on every street corner for rent.
> walking is among the most pleasant human activities
Exactly. An anecdote: babies have a "transportation mode" which in an evolutionary behaviour. I used to carry my two daughters and walk around the house for 1 hour with low light (no Lego's on the floor, no darkness, no stairs), there is human contact, it's good exercise for parents, even relaxation and meditation, and babies get calm and sleep well.
Not only did it fail to solve a basic problem, it was WILDLY overhyped pre-launch. Nothing short of a $500 consumer-friendly jetpack was going to meet the expectations set.
IME, when you come out of the gate not even remotely hitting the expectations that you yourself set on a product launch it takes a very very long time to recover from that setback. If you at least solve real problems at some kind of palatable price point you can make up some of that loss, but when you have and expensive solution looking for a problem, not so much.
The Segway had many issues, IMO one of the larger ones was that it was not that suitable for use in inclement weather. You would think a company based in NH would get this. They were also cumbersome to move around, and didn't even have a kickstand initially, so the matter of where/how you park the thing when not is use just added to the awkwardness of the whole thing.
It is impossible to overstate just how much the Segway (then called "Ginger" or "IT") was hyped up during its secret development period. Bob Metcalfe said it would be bigger than the internet[1]. Steve Jobs said it would be bigger than the PC, and that cities would be redesigned around it[2]. Jeff Bezos was on board[3]. Dean Kamen, the inventor, was going to be richer than Bill Gates[4]. No one knew what the big deal was going to be, but it had to be something incredible with all those names behind it.
And then the announcement came, and it turned out to be a glorified electric scooter with a silly name and a $5,000 price tag.
Strangely, none of the big names involved seemed to suffer any reputational blowback for what now seems like outright lying in service of someone else's hype campaign.
I remember this as a kid, boosters talked about the Segway the way they talked about Google Wave - something almost unexplainably amazing and transformative. There's even an onion video making fun of this years later:
I recall this because I was reading about it on slashdot during the "secret development period". Later I worked with a guy who rode one around and everybody thought he looked like a pompous ass on it.
If that actually happened, then maybe the Segway would have taken off. San Francisco's core downtown area from North Beach to Mission Bay is only around 1.5 miles, with a Segway you could get from one end to the other in 5 minutes - faster than just the wait for a train or bus. Or from Ocean Beach to Union Square in 30 minutes, again faster than the train.
Of course, commute hour would have been a mess with a hundred thousand segways trying to commute to downtown.
This is the reason I would pick for why Segway didn’t take off. I think it would have been popular if it had entered public consciousness in a more gradual way. Instead, the public was pumped up with enough hype that nothing was going to live up to expectations. Oh, and South Park’s take took a bit of prestige away too (hilariously so).
> The real reason the Segway didn't take off, in my opinion, is that it didn't solve any real problem.
This can't be the answer, since it doesn't explain the huge explosion in non-bike forms of electric transportations.
From scooters to electric skateboards to hoverboards to a number of single-wheeled designs. These things are absolutely ubiquitous in any major city, US or Europe, right now.
These all fit in the same practical niche as a Segway, yet are cheaper and cooler-looking.
Segway failed for one reason and one reason only: It was priced way outside of what people would accept for a scooter. Beyond the fact that they were simply too expensive for people to buy, it also gave them a reputation as a bougie display of wealth, which makes people hate them even more.
All of these pay as you go scooter services solved the cost problem and are everywhere now, in exactly the same niche that Dean Kamen envisioned, minus cities redesigning themselves around scooters of course.
Many European cities are expanding their bike paths quite extensively. As an example, this page in Swedish, published by the local government of Stockholm, has a map of the bike path network.
Even little des moines is greatly building bike infrastructure. Though i wouldn't call this designing around bikes. Bikes are clearly for going bar hopping on Saturday, not for any serious business dealings. Though the side effect of all these paths is a few die hards do real business on bikes.
Seems that instead of bar hopping on bikes, you could instead start patronising one of those bicycle bars, which allow you to gain the health benefits of pedalling and the alcohol benefits of alcohol at the same time. And you still get the bar experience, as between drinking on the bike you stop at pubs and drink there as well.
These also use the existing car infrastructure (as they're usually 6-10 passengers drinking + the driver (who stays sober for obvious reasons) and thus about the same size as a transit van), no specialised bike infrastructure is required.
In central London a Lime (or similar) ebike is very often the fastest and most convenient way to get around bar none. The other big advantage of ebikes specifically is that you don't need a change of clothes and won't arrive dripping with sweat.
- Massive and sustained increase in cycle routes (also applicable to ebikes, scooters, etc.), especially fully segregated from traffic and pedestrians, and including redesigning some major junctions and transport hubs
- Actual changes in law to allow e-scooters (initially via hire schemes) as well as police generally turning a blind eye to technically illegal personal e-scooters/and electric skateboards
- Conversion of parking spaces to cycle racks, resident's cycle storage huts, and ebike/scooter drop-off points
- City run cycle hire services and docking infrastructure as well as widespread app based services
- Closing many residential streets to through traffic, allowing only local traffic (almost none) and pedestrians, cycles, scooters, skateboards (seriously, this is amazing, streets are super quiet and I can get around my local area by bike or electric scooter/skateboard quickly and incredibly safely)
- Requiring cycle parking and storage in new residential and office developments
- Increasing of congestions/pollution charging
And when I travel around Europe, though I don't know as many of the specifics, it feels likely many cities are at least as advanced as London, quite likely moreso in many cases. The US… not so much.
For what it's worth, the "cities redesigning themselves around them" thing actually came from a news report about some guy's book about Kamen. As far as I can tell he never said that himself.
Maybe not, but it certainly sounds plausible given the level of hype Mr. Kamen had around the project prior to its announcement. I remember it being a total media circus.
One thing I had completely forgotten is how mediocre the specs were on the first generation Segways. Top speed of 17mph, but realistically more like 12. Range: up to 17 miles. Charge time: 10 hours. MSRP: $4,500.
This is also one of those rare consumer products with dubious distinction of killing its own creator.
>These things are absolutely ubiquitous in any major city, US or Europe, right now.
Ubiquitous is doing a lot of work there. In the Northeast US, I've probably seen an increase in bikes given some dedicated bike lanes but I rarely see anything else.
This is something like seems to vary a lot. Depends of course on whether rentals are available. I rarely see them in Cambridge. But while they were quite popular when they first came out in Raleigh--and I believe rentals are still available--you didn't see them much last time I was there.
I haven't travelled as much as I did pre-pandemic. But my sense is that, even in US cities where escooters were big when they first came out, you don't see them a lot any more. And things like hoverboards are pretty niche--again based on what I've seen.
One Christmas several years ago everyone got hoverboards, but haven't seen one since. Possibly their batteries died, otherwise it was one of the quickest fads I've ever seen. Must have not been practical on the sidewalk. The wheels were very small.
It did solve a real problem, it just did so badly - it was heavy, expensive, clunky, and had no suspension so could not handle much surface imperfection.
I think Kamen's big mistake was that he was pathologically afraid of anything smacking of speed, competition, or plain fun. He explicitly worked to avoid any association or possible diversion of use of the Segway in anything like that, because he thought a key audience was city planners who hated skateboards, and thus any fun at all would result in them being banned from city use. Maybe he's right, but if so, the solution space was zero.
Yet, that total avoidance of fun resulted in a number of disasterous results. First, as PG pointed out, the users all looked like dorks - because they were riding a device designed only for dorks.
This also resulted in zero engineering being dedicated to performance, and the, IMO, insane decision to have no suspension. This resulted in the spectacle of President Bush falling off one on his very public ride, simply from riding over a very small hole. Another very public black eye.
and the general absolutely clunky engineering of the thing resulted in no fun, no enthusiasm, and the only real use case being the mall cop market. And a few isolated groups playing Segway Polo is not exactly an activity to generate enthusiasm.
I'm quite convinced that if he'd engineered the thing to be fun, or at least hackable to be fun, it would have taken off. It would have been much more streamlined, cool looking higher performance, and with a suspension to be able to handle at least a bit of terrain (heck even 2" of travel would have made a huge difference). It would not have been that hard to add a "Calm Zone Mode" akin to phone's Airplane Mode for use in the city...
You can't carry a classic Segway up stairs. It is a balancing wheelchair technology that was turned into a consumer product without considering the usability flaws.
One big thing to add about bikes and ebikes even more, is they can carry stuff, way more than a Segway could (or scooter). With the cargo models, they can replace a car for major trips to the grocery store.
I think this utilitarian feature of the bike is the biggest reason the bike is taking off.
But all those hipster bicycles don't have a rack and people use backpacks instead, even carry their bike locks like a sash, just. because racks apparently look uncool.
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
> 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.
Agreed with everything except the helmets part. The original Segways maxed out at 10 mph (slower than some folks run!), while it looks like the current model is 12½ mph. There is no particular need for a helmet at that low a speed — it’s almost purely superstition.
I kinda feel like I personally would prefer a Segway to an e-bike, but I haven’t ridden either. Kind of feels like a Segway would encourage one to keep one’s eyes up and pay attention to one’s surroundings more.
It solved the problem where distances are long enough that walking would take too long, but short enough that its seems a waste to take a car. For example 1 mile.
One mile takes maybe 20 minutes to walk? Call it 30. And I'm going to deal with a big, expensive device to trim that down to 15? I'm not going to take a car for that distance either unless there isn't decent walking infrastructure. And, if there isn't, I'm not going to take a Segway either.
Well good on you that you have all that extra time that halving the commute time isn't worth it. Is this the only trip that day? What if there are many?
Perhaps beyond that in that the Segway ran into the same systemic and structural problems that people that use traditional active transportation devices like bicycles and scooters ran into: the cities don't have safe infrastructure.
The big problem is that while building safe infrastructure for Segways, scooters and bicycles is pretty cheap and well worthwhile, because it would effectively require taking road space away from exclusive car use, there's an enormous well funded political lobby that will turn out to quash any efforts. Doesn't help that for some bizarre reason transportation choice has also been politicized so it's even a partisan reflex to oppose such things too.
> Walking isn't hard for most people; in fact, for most people, walking is among the most pleasant human activities.
But walking is hard for some people, and I don't get why Segways didn't take off as mobility aids. Especially since the Segway technology came from a power wheelchair that was able to stand and climb stairs (!) Yet even there, I don't know any paras or quads who use them, or anything like them.
Hoverboards require balance, e-bikes are hard to mount, neither can be used (politely) indoors. My wheelchair has e-bike-like wheels, which helps amazingly, but I can still walk a bit, so I'd like some kind of compromise. Where's the innovation? It's 2022 and I want my powered exoskeleton, damnit!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
> 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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=730755 (2009)
See also: Google X
All I could think was "whrrr whrr pew pew whrrrr whrrrrr"... like this photo: 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.
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.
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.
I can't think of any reason i'd want one, they don't solve any problem I have.
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.
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.
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:
black: hispanic: asian: 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-demog...
2. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/05/younger-worke...
3. https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/documenten/rep...
(edit: formatting)
Interesting stats in this article anyhow, especially about how effective bike lanes are at encouraging ridership among underrepresented demographics:
https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-news/122846/l...
Downside: you might not have immediate availability, but you can always walk a block or two to find another scooter.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
Someone riding a Standup-paddle looks like a mega-dork, yet it is a massive success (at least in Europe).
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.
Spending a substantial amount of money and going to the effort of storing a large object just to be able to get someplace faster (but still not as fast as driving), just isn't worth it to most people.
Price.
For renting scooters, there comes in addition that the renting price is often subsidized by VC money.
And that was expensive enough that some people interpreted segway ownership as 'conspicuous consumption', which some people don't like.
+ Have a reasonable price point. Hundreds, versus thousands.
+ Operates in the wet. Including the very wet, like hail. You can even test it offroad without necessarily needing to use the offroad equipment.
+ Familiarity. You don't need to learn to ride them, because it was likely you'd already ridden something similar.
+ It's easy to safely fall, when you inevitably make a mistake. You may not even hit the ground.
+ You can go a reasonable speed - you're not looking to replace walking, but jogging.
+ More familiarity. The imagery of riding a scooter is more of playing around and having fun, than dorkyness or awkwardness, because the device looks unfamiliar and like a new experience. Which makes you more likely to try it, at least once. More people trying it "just once" the more no one notices if you pick it up, because it becomes common.
Really? I cannot ride a two-wheeled scooter (electric or otherwise) for the life of me. I make it about 4 feet before falling over. I think my record distance is 10 feet.
Escooters move at similar speeds to bikes so fit in the same niche. They are also narrower, and this matters on roads.
Exactly. An anecdote: babies have a "transportation mode" which in an evolutionary behaviour. I used to carry my two daughters and walk around the house for 1 hour with low light (no Lego's on the floor, no darkness, no stairs), there is human contact, it's good exercise for parents, even relaxation and meditation, and babies get calm and sleep well.
IME, when you come out of the gate not even remotely hitting the expectations that you yourself set on a product launch it takes a very very long time to recover from that setback. If you at least solve real problems at some kind of palatable price point you can make up some of that loss, but when you have and expensive solution looking for a problem, not so much.
The Segway had many issues, IMO one of the larger ones was that it was not that suitable for use in inclement weather. You would think a company based in NH would get this. They were also cumbersome to move around, and didn't even have a kickstand initially, so the matter of where/how you park the thing when not is use just added to the awkwardness of the whole thing.
And then the announcement came, and it turned out to be a glorified electric scooter with a silly name and a $5,000 price tag.
Strangely, none of the big names involved seemed to suffer any reputational blowback for what now seems like outright lying in service of someone else's hype campaign.
[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2801380/dean-kamen-s-b...
[2] https://www.economist.com/taxonomy/term/34/14587780?page=293
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/dec/04/engineering.hi...
[4] https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2001/01/27/ginger-in...
"Do You Remember Life Before The Segway"
https://www.theonion.com/in-the-know-do-you-remember-life-be...
If that actually happened, then maybe the Segway would have taken off. San Francisco's core downtown area from North Beach to Mission Bay is only around 1.5 miles, with a Segway you could get from one end to the other in 5 minutes - faster than just the wait for a train or bus. Or from Ocean Beach to Union Square in 30 minutes, again faster than the train.
Of course, commute hour would have been a mess with a hundred thousand segways trying to commute to downtown.
This is the reason I would pick for why Segway didn’t take off. I think it would have been popular if it had entered public consciousness in a more gradual way. Instead, the public was pumped up with enough hype that nothing was going to live up to expectations. Oh, and South Park’s take took a bit of prestige away too (hilariously so).
This can't be the answer, since it doesn't explain the huge explosion in non-bike forms of electric transportations.
From scooters to electric skateboards to hoverboards to a number of single-wheeled designs. These things are absolutely ubiquitous in any major city, US or Europe, right now.
These all fit in the same practical niche as a Segway, yet are cheaper and cooler-looking.
All of these pay as you go scooter services solved the cost problem and are everywhere now, in exactly the same niche that Dean Kamen envisioned, minus cities redesigning themselves around scooters of course.
https://cykla.stockholm/cykelnat/
These also use the existing car infrastructure (as they're usually 6-10 passengers drinking + the driver (who stays sober for obvious reasons) and thus about the same size as a transit van), no specialised bike infrastructure is required.
- Massive and sustained increase in cycle routes (also applicable to ebikes, scooters, etc.), especially fully segregated from traffic and pedestrians, and including redesigning some major junctions and transport hubs
- Actual changes in law to allow e-scooters (initially via hire schemes) as well as police generally turning a blind eye to technically illegal personal e-scooters/and electric skateboards
- Conversion of parking spaces to cycle racks, resident's cycle storage huts, and ebike/scooter drop-off points
- City run cycle hire services and docking infrastructure as well as widespread app based services
- Closing many residential streets to through traffic, allowing only local traffic (almost none) and pedestrians, cycles, scooters, skateboards (seriously, this is amazing, streets are super quiet and I can get around my local area by bike or electric scooter/skateboard quickly and incredibly safely)
- Requiring cycle parking and storage in new residential and office developments
- Increasing of congestions/pollution charging
And when I travel around Europe, though I don't know as many of the specifics, it feels likely many cities are at least as advanced as London, quite likely moreso in many cases. The US… not so much.
One thing I had completely forgotten is how mediocre the specs were on the first generation Segways. Top speed of 17mph, but realistically more like 12. Range: up to 17 miles. Charge time: 10 hours. MSRP: $4,500.
This is also one of those rare consumer products with dubious distinction of killing its own creator.
Exactly. When I first saw them I thought that they look like fun. When I saw the prices, I decided that the fun can wait.
Ubiquitous is doing a lot of work there. In the Northeast US, I've probably seen an increase in bikes given some dedicated bike lanes but I rarely see anything else.
These have all declined a lot from our view in Southern California, seeing a lot fewer of them after the peak in... 2018 was it?
Electric bikes are still increasing slowly but surely every year as the price comes down.
It did solve a real problem, it just did so badly - it was heavy, expensive, clunky, and had no suspension so could not handle much surface imperfection.
I think Kamen's big mistake was that he was pathologically afraid of anything smacking of speed, competition, or plain fun. He explicitly worked to avoid any association or possible diversion of use of the Segway in anything like that, because he thought a key audience was city planners who hated skateboards, and thus any fun at all would result in them being banned from city use. Maybe he's right, but if so, the solution space was zero.
Yet, that total avoidance of fun resulted in a number of disasterous results. First, as PG pointed out, the users all looked like dorks - because they were riding a device designed only for dorks.
This also resulted in zero engineering being dedicated to performance, and the, IMO, insane decision to have no suspension. This resulted in the spectacle of President Bush falling off one on his very public ride, simply from riding over a very small hole. Another very public black eye.
and the general absolutely clunky engineering of the thing resulted in no fun, no enthusiasm, and the only real use case being the mall cop market. And a few isolated groups playing Segway Polo is not exactly an activity to generate enthusiasm.
I'm quite convinced that if he'd engineered the thing to be fun, or at least hackable to be fun, it would have taken off. It would have been much more streamlined, cool looking higher performance, and with a suspension to be able to handle at least a bit of terrain (heck even 2" of travel would have made a huge difference). It would not have been that hard to add a "Calm Zone Mode" akin to phone's Airplane Mode for use in the city...
But, that's all history now
I think this utilitarian feature of the bike is the biggest reason the bike is taking off.
Yes. And waiting in a line can be much more tiring than just walking.
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
Agreed with everything except the helmets part. The original Segways maxed out at 10 mph (slower than some folks run!), while it looks like the current model is 12½ mph. There is no particular need for a helmet at that low a speed — it’s almost purely superstition.
I kinda feel like I personally would prefer a Segway to an e-bike, but I haven’t ridden either. Kind of feels like a Segway would encourage one to keep one’s eyes up and pay attention to one’s surroundings more.
Where I live electric scooters aren't allowed to go faster than that anyway and head-injuries has skyrocketed.
Add to that that a Segway is even worse than a scooter for safety since they are much higher.
Perhaps beyond that in that the Segway ran into the same systemic and structural problems that people that use traditional active transportation devices like bicycles and scooters ran into: the cities don't have safe infrastructure.
The big problem is that while building safe infrastructure for Segways, scooters and bicycles is pretty cheap and well worthwhile, because it would effectively require taking road space away from exclusive car use, there's an enormous well funded political lobby that will turn out to quash any efforts. Doesn't help that for some bizarre reason transportation choice has also been politicized so it's even a partisan reflex to oppose such things too.
That's it. I don't think I've seen any other Segways in use in real life.
But walking is hard for some people, and I don't get why Segways didn't take off as mobility aids. Especially since the Segway technology came from a power wheelchair that was able to stand and climb stairs (!) Yet even there, I don't know any paras or quads who use them, or anything like them.
Hoverboards require balance, e-bikes are hard to mount, neither can be used (politely) indoors. My wheelchair has e-bike-like wheels, which helps amazingly, but I can still walk a bit, so I'd like some kind of compromise. Where's the innovation? It's 2022 and I want my powered exoskeleton, damnit!
They solve the same problem as an escooter does, which you see everywhere in large cities now.
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.
Imagine how much less traffic and emissions there would be if Segway had put a reasonable price on their product.
Contrast with today, electric scooters are cheap and ubiquitous. They can be purchased for less than $300 and deliver on the same promise.
[0] 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some prior discussion from a submission I made on the segway a few months ago
And of course you can't ride it on the street. It has nowhere to go but warehouses and hangars.
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.