General > General Technical Chat

Whatever Happened To Segway

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mendip_discovery:

--- Quote from: ebastler on July 02, 2023, 06:22:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: mendip_discovery on July 02, 2023, 10:25:59 am ---I think they fell off a cliff after a PR disaster with the CEO.

--- End quote ---

It was not just a PR desaster -- Jim Heselden,who had taken over Segway a year earlier, literally drove his Segway off a cliff in a 2010 accident.


--- End quote ---

Yup, that was my dark sense of humor.


--- Quote ---Not sure whether that triggered Segway's decline. To me it always felt like an over-engineered product, which made its users look a bit dorky. While I don't like the electric scooters either, they seem like a much more pragmatic solution for local transportation. Feels a bit like a repeat of what happened in the PDA market, with the Newton coming early and with an over-engineered and expensive solution, and then Palm taking ocer the market with a pragmatic "good enough" product.

--- End quote ---

I felt they were a bit of a novelty. They spent well on pr, giving them to the police etc.. It was somthing to do on a holiday trip. If they were new today then I think they would have a lot of success as the mega money investors spend could mean the things being on every street in town as rentals like those scooters.

wraper:
Segway did cost $5000+, quite an investment for something like that. For that you can get 5 really good electric scooters, 10 decent, or 20-30 entry level. Economically Segways make little sense. Nor they can be used without training, which really hurts ride-sharing.

mairo:
Someone (Ninebot) bought them and then they closed - a large auction happened around 2020-21. Lots of new segways and ninebots went virtually for free, but the important bits were the quite modern production, compliance and RnD test gear  :P

G7PSK:
This company in New Zealand uses Segway base for its wheel chair they even sell a kit to convert the Segway that has put you in a wheel chair. https://omeotechnology.com/

SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: G7PSK on July 03, 2023, 01:56:43 pm ---This company in New Zealand uses Segway base for its wheel chair they even sell a kit to convert the Segway that has put you in a wheel chair. https://omeotechnology.com/

--- End quote ---

That's a clever way of recycling what would otherwise end up in the trash. Kudos.

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