The Trouble with the Segway
paulgraham.com
paulgraham.com
"I think it's coming along," said Tim, "though we expect—" "I think it sucks!" said Jobs.
His vehemence made Tim pause. "Why?" he asked, a bit stiffly.
"It just does. [...] Its shape is not innovative, it's not elegant, it doesn't feel anthropomorphic."
This is from "Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World". The chapter with the meeting with Jobs is available here:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=segway_more_...
That's just ignorant. FETs are week ~3 of an intro EE class. It's like saying "What the hell does a function do?" to make fun of C.
So yeah, rest assured he put that in there just to rile people up.
I think there is a select group of people for whom the Segway has a legitimate use--I'm thinking along the lines of people who have trouble walking long distances (say, more than 5-10 minutes). I've seen a lot of people using the Segway for this purpose.
But as a normal means of transportation? No. Price, need, rules for usage etc. are pretty big hindrances for purchase.
Those who say, "Well, you could use a bike, wheelchair, etc." don't understand the use case. A person who can't walk long distances might use it in the mall to go from store to store. Then, when he sees something he wanted to look at, he could get off and browse around for a few minutes. It's the walk from the parking lot to the shoe section at WalMart that gets them -- it's not the few minutes spent perusing the boots.
The problem with Segway, IMHO, is that the initial hype was completely misdirected and Dean Kamen drinks far too much of his own Kool-Aid.
Segway has made a good inroads in the police and security market, as well as the tourism markets.
For what it does best, it's really not that prohibitive, but for consumer transportation, there is less ROI in most cases.
The general public bias against Segways is kind of understandable. Most people aren't capable of thinking outside the box. I'm always a little surprised when the hacker/entrepreneur community seems to jump on that bandwagon though. Even moreso today when so many people claim to be "green" advocates and will proclaim that we need to explore other modes of transportation, yet bash anything that doesn't have 4 tires and a steering wheel.
Sure, the Segway has advantages too - but when people suggest that it should go at 25mph in city streets, it's worth considering whether the Segway's unique properties actually contribute anything. Different tools are better for different jobs.
I'm all in favor of thinking outside the box, but things like cargo bicycles are more practical and interesting (though less sexy and high-tech) for my own city transportation needs: http://www.xtracycle.com/cargo-utility-bicycles.html
A closer comparison is a scooter or moped type of device. Those will fit through some doorways, but being gas-powered they are generally excluded from use or storage in most indoor areas. Cost is comparable, although the scooter would win out on distance and top speed. Most scooters are also too heavy for a single operator to pick up and move, and they also don't generally break down to fit easily in the trunk of a vehicle.
Segway's, even the non off-road models do quite well on dirt/trails, so that isn't an advantage for the bike. They could go in the streets as well, the only limitation there is erratic legislation, so it's hard to make a direct comparison.
This would be worth the extra money and not be uncool.
I had to laugh at the thought of a Segway doing 70mph. I'm all for taking risks, but have you ever done 50mph+ on just a moped?
As for this bit - "imagine something that worked like the Segway, but that you rode with one foot in front of the other, like a skateboard. That wouldn't seem nearly as uncool." - have you seen the Scarpar? It's only 35mph, but definitely, definitely cool.
This similar idea, though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm_2PnSkWck
... maybe. Looks a bit wobblier, but look at it in context - they are on a cycle path and they fit in perfectly well. Someone on a Segway would stand out quite a lot.
(The "dork factor" is what prevents me from doing the smart thing and wearing a skate helmet. Instead I only wear a pair of wraparound shades. Stupid peer pressure...)
I've never ridden a segway, but I have crashed my bike at this speed. I imagined that it would be really bad, but having done it a few times, it is really not that bad. You are moving parallel to the ground, so most of the energy is absorbed by the pavement slowly grinding the top layer of your skin off. Somewhat painful, and very bloody, but not life threatening.
I imagine that riding into a wall at 20mph would be pretty bad, though. All that energy instantly acting to crush your bones and internal organs. I haven't actually tried it, so this is just speculation. (Please report back if you try it ;)
(Oh, and as for the helment; I always wear one, but I have never landed on it while crashing. Let your arms and legs do the work :) I think you have to do something weird to land on your head.)
EDIT: Although I was very dazed at the time, my ankle was actually injured worse than my head.
Hey, I even have a picture: http://rants.jrock.us/post/55729583/good-idea-riding-your-bi...
Not weird, just reckless. Like tolerating faulty rear breaks for a little while. What was I thinking :)... Anyway, the helmet took it and the dog that prompted the full stop got away unscratched...
Also, did you use your front brake? I tend to see my rear brakes as a backup; I use it if the front brake fails, if the front wheel has poor traction, or if I'm descending and just want to slow the acceleration. The front brake can develop about 5x more stopping force, since the front wheel can't skid. And, if you are used to using it, you won't go over the handlebars in an emergency. http://sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html
I used both but only the front worked. So I landed on my helmet, bike on top. Quite the other way than you, I tend to use mostly the rear break. Not being used to rely on the front, not in a "to the floor" way anyway is what got me. That and the lack of proper adjustment tolerated to the rear one.
Also, nice link. Thanks.
Given that the hyped promise of the Segway was literally to revolutionize public transportation as we know it, I'd say the statement is accurate.
"There are several reasons why, but one is that people don't want to be seen riding them."
instead of
"The reason is that people don't want to be seen riding them."
In all honesty, for how many people do you think "how I look while riding it" is the single factor stopping them from buying a Segway? Your statement implies that this is not the vanishingly small number of people I would expect it to be.
However, there seems to be little gain from owning one because they have the same downsides of a bike. Plus, you need to charge them, and you need to more concerned with them getting stolen.
So, the consumer Segway market is basically an expensive vanity item. But, few people actually want to be seen on them due to look and feel issues.
It also makes a lot of sense in that it allows you to cover significantly more territory than you'd otherwise be able to on foot and you're not trapped in the same kind of bubble as you would be on a tour bus.
- I can't ride it up an 80 degree slope covered in ice with unreasonably intense instrumental metal playing in the background.
- It cannot carry the enormous frozen mammal I just picked up at Sam's Club, let alone the metric ton of salsa that was on offer.
- People would laugh and call me Mall Cop, and I'd feel like a twat.
- I would be broke after buying this, and being broke, mocked, hungry, and unable to go off-road is just too frustrating.
.. on the other hand, it's really neat.
Many people, especially those in the market for a new form of walking (people with serious dough), will spend money on impulse, not based on practical utility. Image is a huge selling point for most consumers, though they may not acknowledge it.
Agreed. I mean, look at Macs. Granted, Macs have technical merit, but how many people who use Macs actually bought them for technical superiority and how many others bought them because Apple makes them look cool?
Hip urban web 2.0 Ruby rockstar ninjas are not the only market for tech.
Of course I wouldn't even consider a segway, because the range and cargo capacity are not sufficient for a motor vehicle; and I prefer a bike for local motion.
"capture more of the market Segway hoped to reach"
instead of
"capture the market Segway hoped to reach"
I know firsthand that Segways aren't that useful, because for a couple years I could ride the Segwell whenever I wanted, and all I ever did with it was tool around on the street in front of YC. That is why I qualified these passages the way I did. And that's enough; I'm not going to start cluttering essays with clauses to head off every misinterpretation someone might post on a forum.
I suppose I could create a separate page for each essay, answering in advance all the mistaken objections I knew people would raise about it. ("Note that I did not claim that this is the main problem with the Segway, just one of many" etc, etc.) It seems like a waste of time, but it would take less than this discussion has.
I think the title of the essay (The Trouble with the Segway) kinda does imply that this is the main problem. The title suggests that the essay will explain the Segway's lack of success. Perhaps a different title would have prepared the reader for what was actually in the essay. How about "The Segway's other problem". Personally, I'm starting to think that the real problem is this: it lacks dignity.
The high price instantly relegated the product into a niche. At that price, the Segway is only viable for businesses (consumers can't afford it) that can really justify the need for the product.
Imagine for a second that the first Segway came out at a price of $1000, and that the price gradually dropped to $400 - $500. I think a good number of early adopters would have bought the first dorky-looking version. These people would have used the Segway, and some would have complained about the look. Some people would have started customizing it and making it look cooler, go faster, attach jets to it, etc. Gradually, the manufacturer would have listened to the customers, and would have started making many versions of the product, some for kids, others for teens, adults, etc. They would have created off-road extreme versions of it and one-wheel versions of it.
Basically, I believe that there is a healthy demand for getting around town quickly, and that if the price of the Segway was right, the mass market would adopt it. Mass market adoption would then quickly iron out the dorkyness of the Segway though many iterations of the product.
Americans in the middle class and above aren't strangers to spending substantial amounts of money on stuff that they don't need. Segways are useful enough that I could imagine them gaining a substantial market share if it were fashionable to use one.
Now, that doesn't mean that they would catch on if they weren't dorky. But even at the outrageous price that they were marketed at, I think it's conceivable that they could -- I think they'd have similar chances to other potential fashions. So I actually think I agree with PG more than you. Price and insubstantial benefit are both major problems with the Segway (and frankly I'm being a little devil's advocate here, the price was ridiculous -- but cut it in half or so and I think it stops being prohibitive), but the aspect of Segway that made it impossible for the thing to succeed was its dorkiness.
I might also point out that the reason they failed so spectacularly was a ridiculous level of hype. "Revolutionize transportation" just doesn't fit a reconfigured motorized bicycle.
Having aggressively ridden one while towing a rollerblader with a bungee cord, I can say for sure the most successful marketing would have been as an entertainment and recreational vehicle. Then they'd be like ATVs, but permissible in urban areas. Also, you wouldn't compare the price to a bicycle (10X) but to an ATV (0.5X depending)
Though Wolfram started Mathematica, he has not been actively contributing to it for many years. So, while Mathematica has helped many mathematicians, the kudos go to Wolfram AND his programmers. As much as Wolfram loves to project the image of the lone-wolf genius (and fail to give credit to other people), the truth is that Mathematica is a huge team effort these days.
So, imagine that Mathematica had not been created. Mathematicians would be using other computer algebra systems. If Kamen had not invented his stuff, people would have died. They're playing entirely different games. Sure, Wolfram was a teenage genius that got his PhD in particle physics at Caltech at age 21 or so... but he needs to invent cold fusion (or something huge like that) to attain the fame and notoriety his ego demands.
A new kind of science
I can think of tens of Caltech alumni who accomplished much more than Wolfram, but who are less inclined to publicize themselves. Some examples:
- Arnold Beckman: invented the pH meter, founded Beckman Instruments, and funded tons of great research. Has two buildings at Caltech named after him.
- Linus Pauling: revolutionized Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Won 2 Nobel prizes.
- Charles Townes: invented the maser, won the Nobel prize.
- Bill Shockley: co-invented the transistor, won the Nobel prize.
- Donald Knuth: invented TeX, wrote TAOCP.
- Gordon Moore: founded Intel, started the microprocessor revolution, changed the world.
- Irving Reed: made important contributions to the field of error-correcting codes.
- Carver Mead: revolutionized electronics, founded tons of companies. He's one of the greatest technologists of the last 50 years, and yet few people know of him.
- Bill Gross: started IdeaLab and founded tons of cool startups.
So.. what is it that Wolfram has achieved? His papers on Cellular Automata are cute, but not earth-shattering. ANKOS is a recreational book with more artistic value than scientific value. Mathematica is great, but we could do well without it as there are tons of other CAS'es out there. Alpha is still hype. For someone of such high intellectual caliber, Wolfram has not accomplished much indeed.
Feel free to downvote. Or, if you actually have anything insightful to say, go ahead and destroy my argument.
The Segway is a classic engineering failure, a solution in search of a problem. They developed the iBOT wheelchair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBOT and where looking for a way to sell a commercial version. I think the quote "medical device styling" is right on. If, instead of using his usual industrial design firm, he had given this to IDEO and had them pump out 20 different versions they might have had something.
Human beings probably have long-adapted evolutionary modules influencing which appearances of other human beings look cool and which look dorky. It's hard to fight human nature on such things.
Places your bets on the successfulness of it :)
Hearing/seeing "fanny pack" still makes me snigger like a 10 year old. I agree though. Both look stupid.
Graham's comments are dead-on, but don't let that stop you from getting one if you want. What other people think (especially the average man on the street) doesn't matter as long as you don't want anything from them.
Few people hate or love the design of the ford taurus, for example. And, few would call it great design or horrible design. It emits a weak signal.
I'd argue that if kamen changed the segway design it would just appeal to a different set of people, it wouldn't really be better. There is nothing wrong with the design. It is simple and without stupid frills.
Why are we allowed to critique a web site for having small type and a shitty font and bad colors, but we can't criticize people with poor fashion sense? They're one and the same. The fact that fashion is subject to marketing doesn't make it inherently worthless.
For once I can't disagree with a thing Paul said in this essay. When you ride a Segway, you look lazy. You're expending no muscle and you're not going particularly quickly. If you want to go faster, ride a bike, or jog. By riding a Segway you tell me you're too slobby to learn to job. That's not going to be the truth in all situations, but that's what it says nonetheless.
Because websites are there to be looked at, people who are just going about their lives are not. Websites with small type and bad colours are hard to read but supposed to be read, people's clothing has minor effects on their ability to do what they're doing in most cases. Websites don't have feelings, people do. Many websites are built by designers who ought to be good at design, there's no such expectation that us ordinary people would or should have such skills. Website type is about usability, fashion is about taste - which is subjective and individual. With a website it matters what experience the viewer has, with a person it matters what experience the person themselves has.
They're not one and the same, they're different in just about every respect I can think of.
Whether your or my ideal includes it, a deft sense of social signalling is one of the precise things we humans are both (a) good at and (b) judgmental of. On the African savanna, it evolved as an incredibly useful and efficient tool for deciding if another human was friend or foe.
What the segway needs is to be made faster, you must go faster than 25 mph and it needs to compete better against bicycles and scooters.
In my view the biggest reason for the Segway's failure is that it's a product designed for an infrastructure that doesn't exist. Kamen and his team envisioned cities without cars when they were designing the Segway. Unfortunately all that's available are crowded sidewalks, making the Segway the most expensive way to move along at walking pace.
Even then though, I don't think the Segway will ever succeed in that market as currently designed. It is dorky. Problem is, I don't know what an alternative should look like. It feels like I'll know it when I see it.
So there may be a way to capture more of the market Segway hoped to reach: make a version that doesn't look so easy for the rider. It would also be helpful if the styling was in the tradition of skateboards or bicycles rather than medical devices."
There's such a thing as an "electric skateboard", Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd) is fond of them.
The guy holds 100+ patents and instead of resting on his laurels he just keeps going. He certainly has my respect (for the work he did, that he got wealthy of it is secondary to me).
Anybody that would want to use a segway but doesn't because it makes them look smug has self confidence issues that the segway could never cure. If you need it and can afford it use it otherwise don't. Image doesn't enter in to the equation.
That's the same nonsense that top gear gets in to, cars for hairdressers and that sort of crap.
If you do a lot chances are that you'll be wrong plenty of times. Given the average score of hits:misses Dean Kamen is comfortably outperforming pretty much any poster on HN, on top of that he seems to be a half decent human being trying to solve problems that really matter. His success rate is only part of the picture. Sure he's got an ego and there seems to be a disconnect with respect to how some 'ordinary' people perceive his products. But I guess that once you reach that level you have to be a very balanced person not to let it get to you in some way.
There is some correlation between having a billion dollars in excess income and being out of touch.
Expecially with something like the Segway, where they needed buy-in from local government to let the things on the sidewalks.
But, yeah, North Dumpling Island is all you need to know about the wackiness that is Dean Kamen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dumpling_Island and http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/dean-kamens-led-nat...)
Another thought experiment:
1) Cop on a horse
2) Cop on a motorcycle
3) Cop on a mountain bike
4) Cop on a Segway
I've ordered them, I think, from toughest to dorkiest. Maybe you could swap the horse and motorcycle (though horses are huge). But is there any doubt the Segway is in last place and by far?
Have you seen the Segway tours? http://bit.ly/4J4yJ
Throw some dubs or spinnas on those bad boys, and they'd still look like dorks.
edit- But I do agree with your list. Horses > motorcycles, for sure.
That Segway tour pic is pretty funny. It may be the helmets and manpurses, but funny still the same.
Funny, personally I think that cars with spinners and huge rims looks quite a bit more dorky then Segways.
The big difference between the two is that the Segway never had a sufficiently counter-cultural fan base, and therefore had exactly the wrong sort of exclusivity.
Case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geIsWq5xOSE
Scraper bikes are all over Oakland. Do they look cool? Nope.
I would buy a Segway if it looked like something from Mad Max.
I hate to admit it, but pg is right. Even in a cooler design, in black, and wearing SWAT gear with machine guns etc, they still makes them look like dorks.
Maybe... if segways had become wildly popular, we wouldn't think so? Fashions do change perceptions (consider the 70's). But in this present reality, I think pg is right.
Edit: This is probably why a lot of geeks have a blind spot here.
Edit2: And it's not the laziness or uncoolness of it that's the problem either. Take the goddam Hoverround -- if anything's worthy of scorn, it is. And yet it sells like crazy. No, the exact, specific problem with the Segway is you look like you're standing at a podium.
(It was probably my lousy application that sunk it, combined with the fact that my co-founder couldn't move to the Bay Area, combined with the difficulty in scaling a manufacturing enterprise at rates that would interest VC money).
Anyway the idea was to take something like this:
...and make it about half the size, half the weight, and not homemade-looking. I still have some of the spares from that project (the original was stolen) that I'll try and put something together with soon.
The bottom line is you need to make the person look like they are "driving" and "riding" and not "being transported."
All they needed to do was the "teenager test" -- put it in front of a bunch of high school kids and see if they'd ride it in front of each other.
I could see teenagers mocking it if they could't afford one (which most could not) but there is no doubt it's one of the most fun things I've ever ridden -- probably even more fun than skateboarding.
Great public transit blows it out of the water.
Consider a trip to a city like Berlin and then travel from there to Munich, with lots of travel in the city. Renting a Segway isn't adequate because you commonly want to travel long distances. You also don't want to deal with theft, break downs, weather patterns, etc.
Now consider your habits in your local city - travel is prohibitive based on how far you can walk or with driving parking is commonly a problem.
Selling a bunch of expensive single person transportation units is solving the wrong problem. Making great public transit for cities solves transportation needs.
http://road.cc/content/news/2223-velib-extreme-hits-parisian...
http://frankschmitt.org/projects/powerboard
It has strain gauges that let you control it by shifting your weight. Looks cool yet there is no visible effort so it's a little surprising.
"It was too easy for them; they were too successful raising money. If they'd had to grow the company gradually, by iterating through several versions they sold to real users, they'd have learned pretty quickly that people looked stupid riding them."
This is less an issue of funding and more an issue of their belief that they would make a "new cool"/"paradigm shift"/"disruptive tech." Although this might often be correlated with funding, I think that's because funded disruptive technologies are the ones that make waves (heh). Segway was a company that had the balls to believe that cities would change shape for them; it seems ludicrous to think that looking silly (now) would pose much of a threat to their confidence, money or not.
So instead of pg's conclusion that it was the funding that inhibited them, I suggest it's the very nature of disruptive technologies. Some of these fail and we laugh about it; others actually change the fabric of modern life.
In fact, perhaps it's because they had such a big, outrageous dream that they captured the public imagination (and possibly funding). Outrageous propositions like "technology that changes the shape of industrialized cities" are the sort of black-swan-esque gamble that VCs seem to adore. (Nicholas Taleb's extremistan / pareto principle) Not to mention that it makes a great story for the media.
http://www.theriotwheel.com/Tech_BigBits.html
Watch the videos, this is a self-balancing electric vehicle that would look at home on the road chasing mad max.
The park next to where I live (next door Sunnyvale) occasionally has Segway Polo matches. I wonder what folks will say to that.
They didn't look that dorky either, even with their helmets.
Just sayin'...
"walking distance" varies for everyone, and I know plenty of people who get in cars to go to the corner store.
Funny: they never do it when their cars are stopped.
Even ATVs are cooler and there are some new models coming that look badass.
Now, if it was $900 like a mountain bike, I may give it a try.
Don't you mean: "the company was itself a kind of segue" ?
Weird word;