When the two-wheeled, self-balancing Segway Personal Transporter (PT) was revealed to the public in December 2001, it was  heralded as a once-in-a generation technology that just might replace the automobile. Fast-forward to today, a handful of embarrassing, high-profile crashes and even worse sales, means the vehicle that was supposed to revolutionize transportation is maybe best recognized as the goofy contraption propelling Kevin James forward in the film Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

But 25 years on from the machine’s first nationwide reveal, the underlying technology behind the segway is essential to the millions of shareable e-scooters winding their way through dozens of countries. And while the so-called “micromobility movement pushed forward by brands like Lime, Spin, and Veo isn’t bursting with as much hype as it once had, these small shareable scooters have become an unshakable feature in urban transportation, and they are here to stay. As of last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated there were over 199 e-scooter systems operating spanning 133 cities. 

Segway, it turns out, might have the last laugh after all. 

“I think Dean Kamen [Segway’s founder] got a lot of people thinking about the art of the possible with human-scale form factor,” micromobility expert, former Biden Administration official, and Adapt/Impact LLC founder Gabe Klein tells Popular Science. “He was both too ambitious and not ambitious enough: we didn’t need to replace walking but we did need small donating electric vehicles. I think you could say that Vespa, Segway, Zipcar and the ebike all came together to give the formula for what we have today.”

From wheelchairs to mall cops

Segway was the brainchild of Dean Kamen, a New Hampshire–based inventor and entrepreneur. Kamen had previously patented numerous medical devices, including a portable, wearable insulin pump and a first-of-its-kind portable dialysis machine. His shift toward wheeled vehicles began  in 1999, when his company DEKA Research & Development introduced the iBOT, a wheelchair-like device that used gyroscopic stabilizers to climb stairs. As author Steve Kemper writes in his 2005 book, Reinventing the Wheel, this underlying innovation in gyroscopic, self-balancing technology (pioneered with the iBOT) would provide the foundation for the Segway, and arguably for a whole family of scooters that followed it.

The iconic looking original Segway had two wheels connected by a self-stabilizing platform, with separate motors in each wheel. It stood 45 inches tall from base to handlebars and weighed about 100 pounds. Later models were powered by lithium-ion battery packs, innovative at the time, that could fully charge in around 4-6 hours. It could attain a top speed of around 12 miles per hour and topped out at anywhere between 15 to 24 miles before it would need a recharge.

What really made it stand out for the time though was its self-balancing tech. Taking a page from the iBOT, the PT used gyroscopic sensors and tilt sensors to continuously measure the device’s relative pitch. That was critically important because the PT didn’t have a pedal or a throttle. Instead, riders controlled acceleration and deceleration by shifting their weight forward and back, something that was unheard of at the time. The onboard sensors detected shifts in a rider’s center of gravity and would power motors to catch up with it, keeping the entire thing balanced in the process. To steer, riders would tilt left or right on the handlebars, which weren’t rigidly fixed to the rest of the device.

“It does what a human does,” Kamen explained during a December 3, 2001 Good Morning America appearance where he revealed the Segway. “It has gyros and sensors that act like your inner ear. It has a computer that does what your brain does for you. It’s got motors that do what your muscles do for you.”

Segway intro on Good Morning America Dec 3, 2001

The device went on sale for $5,000, about as much as a used car at the time and  about one sixth of the average American’s annual income. And while the general public viewed the device with equal parts curiosity and bewilderment, tech leaders and analysts were hooked. Then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs believed the Segway PT would transform city landscapes and could rival the personal computer in cultural impact. John Doerr, a prominent venture capitalist whose firm had backed Netscape and Amazon, even predicted it would be bigger than the internet (sound familiar?). Kamen himself reportedly estimated the company would sell 10,000 Segway units per week, which works out to over 500,000 per year. 

And yet, six years after its official release, Segway had reportedly attained just 1 percent of its sales target. In its entire lifetime, the Segway only ever sold 140,000 units. 

Fancy tech with no clear purpose 

From its inception, the original Segway had a kind of identity crisis. Klein, a lifelong cyclist and Vespa rider who served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation under the Biden Administration and previously held a commissioner role in both Chicago and Washington D.C’s  Department of Transportation, and said he had a somewhat confused reaction when he first stepped onto a Segway. 

It was unclear what use case the Segway really served. The self-balancing tech was genuinely impressive at the time he noted, but its bulk heavy design and lack of speed made it a cumbersome tank to lug around.  More than that, though, it carried with it an undeniable dork factor. 

“You looked silly [riding it]” Klein tells Popular Science. “It was replacing walking, not driving, so it had limited use cases and it was expensive.”

And while Segway supporters envisioned one charging in everyone’s garage, the actual audience ended up far more niche. Aside from a cohort of wealthy tech-focused early adopters, the PT mainly ended up attracting tour guides and, yes, mall cops. 

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015) – Segway Stuntman Scene (2/10) | Movieclips

But price and dork factor weren’t the only problems. The Segway was also a gaffe magnet. In 2003, then-President George W. Bush embarrassingly stumbled off a Segway while visiting the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. Years later, a cameraman riding a Segway barreled into sprinter Usain Bolt during his victory lap at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing. But certainly the worst fall of them all came in 2010, when British entrepreneur Jimi Heselden, who had just recently purchased the struggling company, rode his Segway off a cliff and died.

Chinese Cameraman falls on Usain Bolt – Usain Bolt accident with cameramen.Болта сбил оператор

Segway’s transformation 

Segway went through three different owners before finally landing with the then budding Chinese transportation robotics startup Ninebot. The relationship started on shaky ground. Just months prior, Segway had filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, claiming Ninebot had infringed on Segway’s patents for self-balancing technology. Contentious though it was, Segway’s absorption by Ninebot would save the company and arguably steer the e-scooter industry toward what it is today.

“Ninebot reinvented Segway,” Kelin says. 

Ninebot wasn’t a household name when it acquired Segway in 2015. The Segway brand (and its pioneering tech tech) gave Ninebot the credibility and intellectual property it needed to push into the U.S. market. Ninebot would continue selling mobility devices under the Segway name, but the actual product and mindset were flipped on their head. The fancy Segway was largely put on the back burner, and replaced with an assortment of much cheaper, less ambitious scooters coming in at under $1,000. Those cheap, durable scooters are what companies like Bird and Lime would soon buy up by the thousands to build the shared e-scooter fleets that took over American sidewalks.

While less visually striking than the Segway, Klein says the smaller form factors offered numerous clear advantages. These scooters were less bulky, far zippier, much less expensive to produce, and required less storage space. Battery technology also improved markedly in the preceding decade, making them more efficient and capable of offering greater range. 

The timing proved to be perfect. Within about two years, a handful of e-scooter startups started popping up in California, vying to take another stab at Segway’s micromobility vision. This time, the public was ready. Lime and Bird in particular saw explosive growth in 2018. Seemingly overnight, cities across the country, from San Francisco to Austin, were filled with cheap, kick-scooter-style vehicles zooming down roads and sidewalks—often to the chagrin of fuming pedestrians.

”With the advent of bikeshare and then the Chinese dockless innovation, then the Jump bike, and then the Bird scooter concept (buying Segways off the shelf) everything aligned for the newly purchased Segway,” Klein says. 

While these e-scooters were nowhere near as impressive as the PT released nearly two decades earlier,their success was made possible by the underlying tech infrastructure around them. The digital sharing economy, made popular by Uber, meant curious riders no longer had to shell out big bucks to own a scooter outright. Ubiquitous smartphones and cellular connectivity also meant anyone with a mobile device could simply scan one of the scooters scattered around town and be off to the races. This new breed of so-called micromobility devices saw levels of adoption that the Segway could have only dreamed of. According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials, Americans took about 35 million trips on shared bikes and scooters in 2017. Just two years later, that figure had ballooned up to 136 million trips.

Supporters of the micromobility movement echoed many of the same talking points introduced by Segway’s founders. These easy-to-use electric devices, the argument goes, filled a niche for people who didn’t want to drive a car in areas lacking strong public transit. Supporters of the scooters say they’re part of a larger push toward electrification that cuts down on fossil fuel emissions. They also say people opting to take a scooter rather than a car decreases overall car traffic on city streets. And while researchers have closely scrutinized just how true both of those claims really are in practice, the scooter undeniably succeeded at becoming a mainstay on city streets, both in the U.S. and around the world.

The transition isn’t without downsides, though. Just like Uber before it, micromobility companies sped up their adoption in part by flooding into municipalities before local lawmakers could figure out how to regulate them. The ensuing chaos led numerous cities to ban app-based e-scooters altogether. Riders also weren’t exactly prepared for the responsibility the new wheels entailed. E-scooter-related injuries involving riders and pedestrians have climbed sharply in recent years, due partly to a lack of requirements for helmets.

Still the future?

Still, checkered as the rollout has been, it’s hard not to see an echo of Segway’s original vision in it. The platform is cheaper, less glamorous, and more controversial than what was imagined in 2001, but it’s also far more effective. And Segway is quite literally attached to it.Take a look at Bird scooters propped up on sidewalks in Austin, Texas, today and you’ll see a “Powered by Segway” label adorning the platform. At the height of e-scooter mania in 2018, former Segway lead engineer Doug Field drew a through line during an interview with CNN.

“We knew this was the way future transportation products would work,” Field told CNN.  “Anyone standing on something that’s powered by electricity and a computer is a Segway descendant.”

While micromobility as a catchall transportation solution has attracted many critics in recent years, supporters like Klein describe a vision that sounds noticeably similar to what Segway’s early engineers hoped for. 

“It’s the future for cities, Period,” Klein says. “Micromobility is just much more efficient and therefore affordable and we have an affordability crisis in America.” 

Whether or not that vision becomes a reality, or whether e-scooters are destined for the same scrap pile housing so many other Segway PTs, remains to be seen—possibly from behind the wheel of the next generational-defining big bet on movement.

 

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