Segway is to end production of its £4,000 namesake vehicle after 19 years, admitting that its longed-for transport revolution has failed to materialise.
The Segway PT was billed as an easy way to get around for short trips, with riders standing on a platform suspended between two wheels and leaning forwards, backwards and side-to-side to direct it.
But the machines failed to catch on, and quickly earned a reputation for being unsafe, as they could spin out of control and throw users to the ground.
In 2009, just ten months after he bought the company, British self-made millionaire Jimi Heselden rode a Segway off a 30-foot cliff to his death while at his country estate, north of London. He was 62 years old.
And in 2015 a cameraman riding a Segway ran over Usain Bolt as he did a victory lap after winning the 200-metre race in Beijing. Bolt wasn’t injured and later joked about the accident.
As many as 21 employees will be laid off following the decision, with another 12 to stay on for two months to a year, and five remaining at the factory in Bedford, New Hampshire, US.
‘This decision was not made lightly, and while the current global pandemic did impact sales and production, it was not a deciding factor in our decision,’ Judy Cai, Segway president, said.
Since first launching in 2001, the Segway PT has proved popular with tourists and police officers, but never took off as a mainstream form of transport with commuters.
They vehicles were banned in some cities because users could easily lose control if they were not balanced properly.
‘What did they think the market was when they built this, when they designed it?’, asked Maryann Keller, principal at Maryann Keller & Associates.
‘My impression was they were talking about this as personal mobility.
‘How could you think that something this large and expensive would be personal mobility?’
Segway entered the lightweight scooter business in 2017, selling light and inexpensive easy-to-ride vehicles that have taken over the urban streets.
As many as 38.5 million trips on electric scooters took place in 2018 in the US, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials.
The company’s decision to head into the scooter market may have sounded the death-knell for its Segway PT.
Heralding the vehicle, Ms Cai said: ‘Within its first decade, the Segway PT became a staple in security and law enforcement, viewed as an effective and efficient personal vehicle.’
She also noted its past popularity with tourists in major cities across North America, Europe, Asia, South America and the Middle East.
From claiming to ‘replace cars’, to minuscule sales, to being taken over by a Chinese company it accused of copying its technology: The 20-year history of Segway
Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway PTSegway was founded by American inventor Dean Kamen in 1999, after he saw a young man in a wheelchair struggling to get over a footpath.
To help him and those struggling, the entrepreneur designed a self-balancing mobility device to enable users to climb stairs and get over uneven surfaces with ease.
Spurred on by this technology, he then designed the Segway PT – a balancing platform mounted on two wheels to make someone, in the company’s words, an ’empowered pedestrian’.
December 2001: The machine is unveiled on Good Morning America, with the first models sold on Amazon in 2002 at around £4,000.
At the time. Mr Kamen said an urban transport revolution was coming and that cars would soon be obsolete.
The company had hoped to sell 100,000 machines in the first 13 months but, by 2003, it had sold just 6,000, and approximately 23,500 by 2006.
The machines had initially attracted widespread media attention, but they failed to catch on as issues with them began to emerge.
September 2006: All Segway PT’s recalled after engineers identify a software glitch that can cause them to suddenly shoot backwards, possibly causing riders to fall off.
December 2009: The company was then sold to British entrepreneur Jimi Heselden.
Ten months later he died after a Segway took him over the edge of a 30-foot cliff, at the age of 62.
February 2013: The business was purchased by Summit Strategic Investments, and in September 2014 launched legal action against several Chinese companies, including Ninebot, which it accused of copying its technology.
However, the legal action was shortlived.
April 2015: Beijing-based Ninebot, which had been accused of copying Segway’s technology, buys the company.
It then sets about generating small electric scooters using the brand in order to make the company profitable.
As popularity for the scooters grew, interest in the founding Segway machine dwindled until it was just 1.5 per cent of the company’s annual revenue.
August 2015: Usain Bolt is hit by a cameraman riding a Segway at the Olympics in Beijing.
The athlete was doing a victory lab after winning the 200-metre race at the time. He was uninjured and is said to have later joked about the incident.
June 2020: Segway announces it will cease production of its flagship machine the Segway PT by July 15 this year.
It is consigned to the scrapheap of history as another invention that never managed to take off.
Source: Dailymail
