Will the Segway ("Ginger") change the world as we know it?

Great Debates
81

Sam Stone - your points are well taken, but you keep forgetting that they are proposing this as a means of transportation for city dwellers, not for the suburbs. I don’t think anyone expects this to get big in suburban or rural areas.

My 2 cents: As an urban dweller, I must admit I would love this thing. My 8 mile commute often takes me 1.5 hours by bus (believe it!). I would much rather be on my own schedule than wait for a bus - plus I would get there a lot faster if I got a steady 12mph out of it.

PeeQueue

82

PeeQueue: Yes, but those inner-city sidewalks are pretty crowded. I don’t see what benefit a Segway gets you there, because you’re going to be reduced to walking speed. You just can’t mix traffic of two radically different speeds. People will cut in front of you, doors open in front of you, etc.

So if you’re going the same speed as the people walking around you, why would you want to be on a Segway, unless you are physically handicapped? Especially when you consider the added hassle of getting it through doorways, finding a place to park it, etc?

It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

83

I don’t mean to always be Mr. Negative, but those trailers look like they were Photoshopped into that picture separately from the guy pulling them - who looks photoshopped in, too.

84

erislover wrote:

Best word I could come up with on the spur of the moment that describes the wretched, overpowering awfulness of Chee-Tos[TM] brand “cheese” flavored puffs.

85

Am I the only one who can easily picture Sam Stone standing outside a Sharper Image store, 12ga in hand, defying anyone to buy one of these things?
:smiley:
BTW; You can ride them into the store. No need to park.
Peace,
mangeorge

86

Huh? I think the Segway is cool, and I’ve repeatedly said that I think it’s going to be a huge success in many niche markets.

I could just do without the societal engineering nonsense. You don’t need to claim that your scooter will cause cities to be redesigned and the very fabric of society to be changed, in order to promote it. For specialized uses, it’s revolutionary. But a replacement for the auto it’s not. It’s not even a very good substitute if you’re able-bodied.

87

Oh, and I love drooling over the Sharper Image catalogs, and I’m a real gadget freak. I love stuff like this.

88

If you think you could use something like the Segway, but think $3K is too much to spend, this might be of interest to you. It has roughly the same range and slightly higher top speed than the Segway, and it’s only $600. Plus it comes with a handy cargo basket.
Or there’s rl=“http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/productview.jhtml?sku=JD070BLU”]this, which is slightly less powerful, but it can function as a regular scooter if you run out of power or feel like getting some exercise (try doing that in a Segway :))

89

Click on this for the second scooter.

90

Today in the abnormally warm Toronto weather, I saw a guy go by on a powered stand-up scooter. The wheels of the scooter were about twice the size of the ones in the links, and there was some sort of buzzing gas engine mounted at the rear.

The scooterist took to the road, and he was moving a lot faster than the 17 mph/27? km/h of the Segway’s top speed when he went out of sight. Sure, he doesn’t have the Segway’s zero turning radius, but he’ll get a lot farther, and he can still pick up his vehicle and carry it inside at the end of the trip…

Food for thought.

91

Yeah, I was wondering about that too. There’s probably some disclaimer somewhere on the site that says that all the pictures are ‘artists’ impressions’ and ‘products may not be exactly as shown’.

92

Interesting? Yes, definitely.

Revolutionary? No, not really. Just interesting.

As others have mentioned, a scooter, like a bike or roller blades, tends to be a fair-weather affair. As I type this, it’s currently fifteen degrees below zero, Farehneit. My local Post Office and Grocery store is roughly three miles away. There’s two feet of snow on the ground.

You couldn’t use tear gas and a shotgun to get a reasonably sane person to ride an open scooter to the end of my driveway, let alone all the way to the Post Office.

Besides, how long would the battery last? Six minutes? Seven? The massive 850-amp unit in my car loses better than 60% of it’s power at anything below zero. Heck, that’s the same reason you’ll never see electric vehicles outside Sun-Belt areas.

Even sunny California sees rain and bad weather on occasion; if you’ve banned cars from cities, all of a sudden that quick trip on a Segway is a five-mile walk in the rain.

Besides which, has anyone thought of the fact that, since the thing is <i>entirely controlled</i> by your body position, that you’ll have to stand in one particular position or attitude during the entire trip (other than turning or negotiating curbs, etc.)

You’re leaning forward to go forward- once you’ve reached a certain speed and stopped accellerating, you tend to straighten up, else you’re having to actively maintain a leaned-forward attitude… Perhaps the software can compensate for this sort of thing, but I get the feeling that longer trips- say more than fifteen or twenty minutes- are going to tire a rider from having to hold a certain body position.

All in all, I agree with most of the rest- it’s interesting, but doesn’t come within a couple of nautical miles of it’s hype. Sure, some people in warehouses and such may well use it, but cops on the beat? Even in the warehouses, when you stick a trailer on it, what makes a Segway any different from an electric cart like grocery stores have? In fact, if you apply the Segway’s suppoedly more-efficient drivetrain to a larger package, wouldn’t the battery last longer?

I doubt it’ll go the way of the hula-hoop or pet rock, but neither will it cause a “restructuring of cities”- at least, any more than, say, bicycles have.

93

I don’t think that it’s a limitation of the technology per say. We used to use electric golf carts at a place I worked, and we once ripped the governer out of one for kicks - boy did it fly after that! Certainly much faster than usual golf-cart speed. It was pretty hard to control and potentially dangerous, though.

I think one of the main reasons that the Segway will never catch on in a place like a university campus is that it makes you look like a dork. Take a look at the people on the official website - they look like the kind of people who other people whisper about behind their backs. College students are concerned about things like this, and you can’t convince me that these things will ever become popular enough among a cash-strapped students that it will not be percieved as a giant step towards loserdom.

94

Sam, if you ever visit Atlanta, I can show you exactly how it would work (and work well) here. Downtown Atlanta is filled with high-rise offices. Just east of downtown are numerous old neighborhoods. (Virginia-Highland, Inman Park, Druid Hills, Candler Park, etc., etc.)

Now, most of the people who live in these old neighborhoods work downtown (or else somewhere reasonably close by), and they currently drive to work.

We are fortunate enough to have a bicycle path which connects downtown with these old neighborhoods. Not only that, but the path runs all the way out to Stone Mountain, some 20-odd miles away. (The “path” is not a stand-alone path at all points. In some places, the path is a dedicated bicycle lane on a regular street. But for much of its length, it is a true path.)

(The path, incidentally, is in part the legacy of a failed freeway. The state DOT had planned to build a freeway from Stone Mountain to Atlanta. The intown neighborhoods fought that plan and won, but in the meantime, the DOT had already condemned and acquired a sizeable chunk of real estate. That real estate became Freedom Park, and the path thereon.)

I can easily imagine commuters using this path to get to work and to run errands on Segways. Once they arrive downtown, most of the streets there would be wide enough to accomodate a dedicated Segway lane, avoiding the crowded sidewalk problem.

In addition, there are currently a number of condominium projects being developed in downtown Atlanta. When these are completed, the residents of these projects could easily use Segways to make a sort of reverse commute to get to all of the bars and restaurants in the old neighborhoods.

The City of Atlanta has had an ongoing problem meeting Federal clean air standards, so there WILL be money available to explore these options (both local money and Federal money). The City (by which I mean the city government) is VERY interested in the Segway, and has alread ordered some for use by its “Ambassador Force” (tourism employees who patrol downtown) and for its police force.

It would not surprise me at all to see Atlanta, for one, commit to this technology in a big way.

95

Regarding why wouldn’t someone want to walk - there are two reasons… First, maybe I’m lazy, but I don’t want to walk 8 miles to work everyday. Especially in the summer, and especially if I’m wearing a suit. Second, there are points where I’m sure I would be able to go a good bit faster than walkng speed, although admittedly not the whole way.

On the other hand, this gets me thinking about whether I’d really want to stand for the 45min to 1hr commute that it would be.

PeeQueue

96

Here’s a question:

This thing can go fast enough to seriously injure someone in the event of a collision. If Kamen is right and they become wildly popular (more popular than bikes, which, even in Manhattan, are a minuscule fraction of all vehicle/foot traffic), will people be required to maintain insurance on them, just as they do on cars? Seems like that $3,000/“dime’s worth of electricity” pricetag could climb much higher.

97

IMO, extending this argument to the Segway is a fallacy – it’s already proven to work just fine on wet and slippery terrain (this week’s Time includes a photo of an engineer driving a Segway through deep water), and Kamden’s earlier electric wheelchair already navigates sand, dirt, and gravel as well. I wouldn’t put it past the Segway to do snow without any effort.

Without having ridden one, my guess is that the amount of “leaning” required to operate a Segway is less than what you think. Supposedly we’re leaning forward (slightly) anyway when we walk – the Segway simply senses that slight lean and interprets it as a “go forward” command.

Again, it’s hard to really draw conclusions about the Segway without having tried one, but I think folks who are directly comparing it to existing bicycles/golf carts are making a mistake.

98

-Kamen’s other wheelchair navigates obstacles with movable wheels mounted on articulated arms. It appears as though the Segway has no more “suspension” than a Razor Scooter.

In any case, I’m not saying the thing will be wholly useless the moment there’s a few drops of rain… I am saying there’s a lot of areas in the US- and the World- where normal local weather will play a very significant role in the use of a Segway type scooter.

Another poster mentioned wintertime Chicago. I mention wintertime Alaska, and our “winter” lasts from late September to late April. I can tell you that, right now, the ONLY place you could find to ride a Segway in Alaska, would be indoors; Not only would you not want to be exposed and moving when it’s below-zero, but all outdoor surfaces including most roads, have anything from a thin skim-coating of ice to several inches of lumpy, rutted hard-packed snow.

Which makes me wonder how well the body-position software compensates for things like one wheel dipping into a small pothole. You’d naturally lean to the opposite side- will the scooter interpret that as a “steer right” command and run you into a wall? Or out into traffic before you can get your moving-body balance back in control?

My opinion? Sure, you’ll probably see a lot of people using them in places like Disneyland, where the weather is predominantly fair. Though even then, I have my doubts that even Disney will use very many- I mean, isn’t that a kid’s park? Do you really want to plunk five-year-old Junior on a scooter that goes where you just think you want to go?

But there’s a lot of places where it’ll never be anything more than a toy or gimmick. So I reiterate, it’ll be interesting, but hardly revolutionary.

99

We have bicycle cops now, so why not Segway cops?

100

Me too. There’s a Real Store in San Francisco I like to browse once in a while. I almost bought one of those $300 electric scooters. I did get a nose hair clipper. Paid way too much, but who care’s. It was a Sharper Image nose hair clipper, after all. Besides, it works. :wink:
BTW, Sam, I was just picking you a little.
Peace,
mangeorge