The Segway scooter is no more
Lesson summary
Here we are together again for Plain English lesson number 275. I’m Jeff; JR is the producer; and the full lesson can be found at PlainEnglish.com/275.
Coming up today: The Segway scooter is being retired. It was supposed to revolutionize the way we move about the world, but it did not live up to the hype. In the second half of today’s episode, we talk about what it means to be a flop, and I veer way off topic to talk about something called New Coke. Just wait.
Segway scooter to stop production
It was going to change history, but now it is history. Ninebot, the Chinese company that now owns the rights to the Segway scooter, announced it would shut down production at the firm’s only Segway plant in New Hampshire as of mid-July. A small crew will stay on to handle repairs and warranties. By the time you hear this, the very last new Segway will have already been produced.
The Segway scooter burst onto the scene in 2001, when inventor Dean Kamen promised the world he would revolutionize personal transportation. We were ready to launch into the future; in the momentous year 2000, anything seemed possible. Why do we need to drive around, each one of us, in a hulking machine, a dangerous machine, made of 4,000 pounds of metal, otherwise known as a car? Kamen’s invention was going to do to the car what the car did to the horse-and-buggy.
Speculation swirled for the better part of a year. Was it going to be a hovercraft? Was it going to be a flying car? Was it going to defy gravity? After months of hype, Kamen revealed his invention on Good Morning America, a morning television talk show. It was the Segway, a play on words that I’ll explain in a minute. This invention was a self-stabilizing personal transporter that looked like a tall scooter. A user controlled its movement by simply leaning forward or leaning back. Maximum speed: twelve miles per hour. It cost the same as a small motorcycle, about $5,000.
At its launch, Kamen projected that he would sell 100,000 Segway PT scooters per year. In the end, Segway did sell 140,000 scooters—in total over nineteen years. The Segway did not revolutionize personal transportation. Its launch was its peak of popularity: it was all downhill from there.
The Segway was not a total flop. If you live in a big city with a lot of visitors, you have no doubt seen Segway tours for tourists. Police also used them. Police want to stand higher than a crowd and they want to be able to cover a lot of ground, so the automatic propulsion was an advantage. Yet apart from law enforcement and tourism, the Segway never really found a market. It was more expensive than a motorcycle, slower than a simple bicycle (invented in 1817), and bulkier than a simple two-wheeled scooter.
Even in its two markets—tourism and law enforcement—it was always a bit of a joke. Were you ever really afraid of a police officer on a Segway scooter? If you were at first, you probably weren’t after seeing the movie, “Mall Cop,” which features a buffoonish, overweight security guard who patrols his shopping mall on a Segway. And who among us has not laughed inside (if not out loud) when seeing tourists in multi-colored helmets in a long line moving at five miles per hour, taking up an entire sidewalk and blocking everyone’s way?
The Segway never made the jump from novelty to useful. A lot of products start their lives as expensive and somewhat silly-looking toys, but quickly evolve to become essential. Think about the original laptop computers or the original cell phones. The Segway never evolved. The last Segway coming off the line will not be any smaller, cheaper, or better than the first one almost twenty years ago; if anything, the last one will be more expensive, defying the trend in electronics and indeed cars over the same time period.
Segway also suffered a stroke of dramatic misfortune. Daniel Kamen sold the company in 2010 to a British entrepreneur named Jimi Heselden. After taking control of Segway the company, Heselden fell off a cliff and died—while riding a Segway, his company’s own product.
Ninebot, the company that now owns the Segway brand, is a popular global scooter maker. It supplied scooters to Lime and Bird, which you can learn about in Plain English Lesson number 47. As a result of its Segway division, it owns over 1,000 patents on stabilization and propulsion that will be useful for a variety of other uses, including hoverboards, skateboards, and scooters.
Best technology tools for learning English
I promised I’d explain why Segway is a play on words. The product Segway is S-e-g-w-a-y, and way, w-a-y, is often used in movement and transportation. The English word segue, which is s-e-g-u-e, means a transition. It sounds like a French word, segue.
Before we segue into the second half of the lesson, I wanted to tell you about an upcoming free webinar on PlainEnglish.com. JR and I will be hosting a webinar about all the best technological tools you can use to improve English in 2020. I’m not going to overpromise, like the Segway people did. There are no revolutionary answers here; it’s not going to change the way you learn English forever. Instead, it’s going to be a very practical thirty- or forty-minute presentation laying out the best tools, according to my research. And I hope it will be interactive too, where you can share your own experiences and tell your fellow listeners what has worked well for you.
So all that is coming up. We’re going to be doing those next week, the week of July 13. We’ll be doing one on July 13, July 15, and July 18. And if you’re listening after those dates—don’t worry, the replay will be available. So come join us for those webinars. Just visit the home page of PlainEnglish.com and scroll down to the webinar section or check the transcript of this lesson for a link. It’s also on your dashboard, for those of you who are free members.
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