That’s OK, astro, I thought the Bush Countdown Clock was cool. :eek:
You aren’t by any chance related to the Jetsons, are you? 
What the hey? This isn’t going to replace cars! It’s just a scooter! Did Scooters replace cars? No! Good golly.
It’s not covered, can carry only one person at a time, and you cannot carry anything in it. And clearly you aren’t going to lug it around with you everywhere you go, so you park it somewhere, and then it’ll be so easily STOLEN!
They have got their heads screwed on upside down.
These are basically the same points I’ve been wondering about. What if it rains? Your whole day is screwed. I bet these won’t sell too good in Seattle or Miami. And where are people going to park them? Someone may not bother cutting a chain for a $90 bicycle but you bet your ass they’d do it for one of these. A kid going to school could probably wear his backpack but I doubt a businessman going to work could carry his briefcase on one of these. Have these points been addressed?
If it rains, just use a raincoat or umbrella. Or keep your car for rainy days, you’d still save a lot on gas to justify buying a Segway. As for parking, have you seen how small it is? I think you’d just take it into your office/cubicle and lean it aginst the wall. As for luggage there are already hard-shell backpacks suitable for documents and laptop computers, designed for bicycle commuters.
Traffic congestion is getting ridiculous in most large cities. Most of the time cars are used to transport one person through heavy traffic where you’d be lucky to get 15mph average speed. Public transport don’t quite get you to the destination. I think the Segway makes a lot of sense.
Okay. Right now I’d like to go to the post office and the grocery store. Please describe how you would run these errands, safely, with a 21 month old, bringing at least three cloth sacks of groceries with you home?
Looks like an expensive and overhyped toy from where I’m standing. Might be useful for commuting, but there are already plenty of vehicles out there suitable for commuting and they have so far failed to change the world.
I’m thinking it might be useful for folks who have trouble walking at normal speeds - senior citizens, folks with cerebal palsy, and so forth.
Commuters? I can’t imagine they’d let masses of people onto a bus or train with one of these - it would severely limit the number of people the mass transit vehicle could handle. Maybe ride to the local station from home? Well…in nice weather, yes, except the routes available for me to get there involve roads with freeway speeds. Can’t imagine hordes of commuters on the other end, downtown, would make anyone happy with dragging these things onto overcrowded elevators. You’d need a secure lockup for them.
As I said it won’t replace a car completely, but if it supplements your car and reduce your car usage by 50% it will pay for itself in a copule of years. Also, just because it can’t do everything a car can do, it doesn’t mean you can’t re-structure your life around it. You may do things differently but it’s not necessarily less convenient.
I do have my doubts about it though. It’s a heavy machine, has limited range and as you point out, limited cargo capacity. Personally I’ll stick to bikes for now. Still, when you consider how much space and resources are used up by cars, I think any alternative should be considered seriously.
While this vehicle might have some innovative concepts in and of itself, as has been pointed out, there are practical problems that cannot be overcome.
I am sure Kamen will sell a bunch of these, but it is not the world-changing transport it has been built up to be.
That makes it sound like it only runs at walking speed. If Ginger only goes at walking speed, and has no other advantages over a car (i.e. warmth, security), then this invention, no matter how clever or fun it is to use, is simply a way for our leg muscles to atrophy even further.
I would love to use alternative transport, as I work 6 miles away from my office, on the other side of a city center, in a country where it’s cold and it rains all the time. Unless Ginger/IT/segway is significantly faster than walking speed, I will still be hauling my 150-lb ass in a 4,000-lb piece of metal for years to come.
Oh, and since this thread seems destined for IMHO, scr4, I just don’t see this machine replacing car usage much at all.
It does seem like an alternative for inner city “we don’t need a car, we walk to work” type people, but I see no use for it whatsoever regarding people who live more than five miles from work.
Personal transport vehicles are cool, but you can’t pick up the kids from soccer practice, and get groceries. I like the idea, and hope it will morph into larger vehicles.
Aw heck. I’m sure the people making this thing will sell a $5000 Radio Flyer wagon to tug around behind it. Bleah. Never heard of IT until I got to this thread, never care to again.
Such as cars?!! 
I don’t see a product like this replacing any car usage for us. Fella bilong missus flodnak works far away enough, and our climate sucks enough, that no open form of transportation is going to be attractive. If he worked closer to home, possibly, for part of the year. Even riding a single mile on a bike or scooter is pretty unattractive when it’s 3C and raining, however.
For me, I almost never leave the house without taking one or both kids with me, and when I do I nearly always end up bringing shopping home. A bicycle is a possibility sometimes (or would be if I didn’t have problems with my knees), and walking with the baby in a stroller is a possibility sometimes and I do that when I can, but this scooter is less practical than either.
I don’t think we’re all that unusual, either. For people without young children, living in cities with mild climates, this could be useful. For the rest of us, it’s destined to be a trendy toy at best. Remember when those razor scooters first came out, and there were tons of adults riding them? I can’t remember the last time I saw one with an adult on it. Nice for kids to ride to school and to their friends’ houses, but not really practical for your average office worker.
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*Originally posted by scr4 *
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I just watched them ride it around on Good Morning America. They didn’t say how much it weighed but it’s no razor scooter, you definately won’t be lugging this thing around with you.
Eh, you must be on Eastern Time, Cisco. They just now unveiled it here in CST, and they said, “We’ll ride it later.”
He’s billing it as a “self-balancing personal transport”. You stand on it and hold the handle, I guess. It’s a scooter with big fat rubber tires, but with your feet and the tires side-by-side, not one in front of the other, and a big handle coming up to your waist. He’s not saying how it works, very close-mouthed about it. But maybe they told him, “Not too much of the technical stuff, nobody’s interested this early in the morning.”
Charlie Gibson tried to get him to say how it works, and he gave him a long talk about “when you walk, do you think about it?” I’m guessing you press on the foot plates.
It has gyroscopes so you can wheel around on it without its falling over.
…what’s your opinion? Did it look easy to manoeuvre? To stop? Etc.?
It’s on GMA. It doesn’t look particularly fast, but it does look extremely maneuverable. It doesn’t look like a “toy”, like something that’s going to be the next Xtreme sport.
Charlie Gibson says it’s really easy. It looks very smooth. You just lean forward and it goes–you lean back and it stops. I’m guessing it’s in the foot plates.
In real life application, I can see it as a way to get around an office building for someone who wasn’t quite handicapped enough to need a wheelchair, someone very weak, for example. It has a smaller “footprint” than a wheelchair and is easier to pick up and put in the back of the car. If you can stand up and hold the handle, you can use it.
This isn’t going to replace automobiles, it’s going to replace bicycles
Ladies & Gentlemen, I bring you that 1980s flop, the Sinclair C5..
Basically Ginger is a powered vehicle so will not be permitted on the pavement (‘sidewalk’ for you merkins). You’ll probably need insurance for it as well.
So you’re going to have to use it on the road. Fancy dodgy through the traffic on this? And who’s going to insure you on it? Why is it better than a normal scooter or moped?
I fear it’ll flop for all the same reasons the C5 flopped.
Bah. dodging through the traffic.