tomamil
03-27-2005, 03:40 PM
When the Segway was first announced, I thought it would quickly prove itself as a local-distance travel technology and rapidly escalate its sales volume to mass-market proportions. I was wrong.
Of course I had a lot of company in this false expectation, including Mr. Kamen himself. Things just didn’t work out the way we thought. Best-laid plans, etc. I don’t regret my purchase decision, because the Segway has more than repaid its cost in plain old fun. But I can’t deny that it would be both gratifying and immensely useful to see the machine “take off” and become a common feature of the urban scene, in the way that we all thought it would back in 2002-2003. At the very least, greater sales would help considerably in my selfish personal desire to see it become legal in NYC.
At this point I doubt the Segway will ever reach this status in the U.S. by its own unaided efforts. There are a lot of reasons for this, some big and some trivial. I only want to focus on one of them, which I think happens to be the most important: America’s overwhelming dedication to the automobile on every level, from the psychological to the economic to the cultural to the historical. This dedication makes it very difficult for any competing mode of transport to gain a foothold, even in realms where the car is hugely inappropriate, such as dense urban centers.
For many reasons, Segway LLC just can’t break through the resistance created by this peculiarly American dedication (although it is almost as strong in Europe as it is here). That doesn’t necessarily mean Segway is doomed as an invention, but it does restrict Segway’s market opportunities to rather narrow niches. These small niches , in turn, prevent the machine from partaking of the mass-production economies of scale that would allow it to be sold at “consumer-friendly” prices, like the personal computer, for example.
Along with many others on this board, and I’m sure a lot of people at LLC, I’ve given this problem quite a bit of thought. As I said, I’ve concluded that the problem is essentially insuperable here in the good old USA. But there is a marketing strategy that could do an “end-run” round the problem. I can’t say for certain that it would work, and I don’t have the capital to test it out, but I would like to “donate” it to the Segway community, including LLC, no strings attached, in the hopes that somebody will find a way to develop it and prove it out. Or, at the very least, to open up a new and interesting thread!
There are two huge potential markets that are now opening up to a Segway-type transportation alternative, and that are not yet irreversibly committed to “car culture.” One is China and the other is India. Both of these nations are just now entering the modern age. Their economies are powerhouses and their urban centers are burgeoning. Both of them are facing enormous infrastructure challenges associated with modernization. One of these expenses is in the area of personal transport. In the U.S., Europe, Japan and Korea, this challenge was met by huge social investments in mass transit and in automobile roads.
The appeal of the Segway in this environment is that it eliminates the need for some of this social investment, at least in inner cities, where a) establishing mass transit is extremely expensive, and b) automobile roads and highways and the car traffic associated with them are enormously destructive to the urban ecology. Segways are also cheaper than cars, easier to maintain, easier to park, and of course, non-polluting.
So my idea is for some smart, well-connected entrepreneur to establish a Segway connection to sympathetic governmental figures in China or India, import a bunch of machines, and see if a market foothold can be created among the emergent working and middle classes of one or two big Asian cities with temperate climates that lend themselves to year-round Segway commuting. Perhaps the horrendous consequences of car culture in urban environments can be avoided in these milieus. Perhaps the challenge of developing a “Segway infrastructure” in these locales could be tested out and refined. Perhaps the potential of the Segway can be proven in these cities and countries and then the lesson carried back to the USA.
It wouldn’t be the first time a great invention appeared in one country, but was stymied by resistance from existing technologies and had to be developed to its full potential in another country, with a more “backward” economy. Sometimes “backwardness” confers advantages, by allowing newer technologies to be adopted with less resistance and expense.
Good luck, whoever wants to invest in this idea. Or, if you just want to shoot it full of holes, fire away!
Tom A. Milstein
Segways should be everywhere by now!
Of course I had a lot of company in this false expectation, including Mr. Kamen himself. Things just didn’t work out the way we thought. Best-laid plans, etc. I don’t regret my purchase decision, because the Segway has more than repaid its cost in plain old fun. But I can’t deny that it would be both gratifying and immensely useful to see the machine “take off” and become a common feature of the urban scene, in the way that we all thought it would back in 2002-2003. At the very least, greater sales would help considerably in my selfish personal desire to see it become legal in NYC.
At this point I doubt the Segway will ever reach this status in the U.S. by its own unaided efforts. There are a lot of reasons for this, some big and some trivial. I only want to focus on one of them, which I think happens to be the most important: America’s overwhelming dedication to the automobile on every level, from the psychological to the economic to the cultural to the historical. This dedication makes it very difficult for any competing mode of transport to gain a foothold, even in realms where the car is hugely inappropriate, such as dense urban centers.
For many reasons, Segway LLC just can’t break through the resistance created by this peculiarly American dedication (although it is almost as strong in Europe as it is here). That doesn’t necessarily mean Segway is doomed as an invention, but it does restrict Segway’s market opportunities to rather narrow niches. These small niches , in turn, prevent the machine from partaking of the mass-production economies of scale that would allow it to be sold at “consumer-friendly” prices, like the personal computer, for example.
Along with many others on this board, and I’m sure a lot of people at LLC, I’ve given this problem quite a bit of thought. As I said, I’ve concluded that the problem is essentially insuperable here in the good old USA. But there is a marketing strategy that could do an “end-run” round the problem. I can’t say for certain that it would work, and I don’t have the capital to test it out, but I would like to “donate” it to the Segway community, including LLC, no strings attached, in the hopes that somebody will find a way to develop it and prove it out. Or, at the very least, to open up a new and interesting thread!
There are two huge potential markets that are now opening up to a Segway-type transportation alternative, and that are not yet irreversibly committed to “car culture.” One is China and the other is India. Both of these nations are just now entering the modern age. Their economies are powerhouses and their urban centers are burgeoning. Both of them are facing enormous infrastructure challenges associated with modernization. One of these expenses is in the area of personal transport. In the U.S., Europe, Japan and Korea, this challenge was met by huge social investments in mass transit and in automobile roads.
The appeal of the Segway in this environment is that it eliminates the need for some of this social investment, at least in inner cities, where a) establishing mass transit is extremely expensive, and b) automobile roads and highways and the car traffic associated with them are enormously destructive to the urban ecology. Segways are also cheaper than cars, easier to maintain, easier to park, and of course, non-polluting.
So my idea is for some smart, well-connected entrepreneur to establish a Segway connection to sympathetic governmental figures in China or India, import a bunch of machines, and see if a market foothold can be created among the emergent working and middle classes of one or two big Asian cities with temperate climates that lend themselves to year-round Segway commuting. Perhaps the horrendous consequences of car culture in urban environments can be avoided in these milieus. Perhaps the challenge of developing a “Segway infrastructure” in these locales could be tested out and refined. Perhaps the potential of the Segway can be proven in these cities and countries and then the lesson carried back to the USA.
It wouldn’t be the first time a great invention appeared in one country, but was stymied by resistance from existing technologies and had to be developed to its full potential in another country, with a more “backward” economy. Sometimes “backwardness” confers advantages, by allowing newer technologies to be adopted with less resistance and expense.
Good luck, whoever wants to invest in this idea. Or, if you just want to shoot it full of holes, fire away!
Tom A. Milstein
Segways should be everywhere by now!