How Electric Scooters Fulfill the Segway's Original Dream

At the end of the last century, the tech world waited with bated jiff for a revolutionary new product from entrepreneur Dean Kamen. Though cloaked in secrecy, it received great attention from tech luminaries like Steve Jobs and venture backer John Doerr, who said it might be bigger than the net.

That revolutionary invention turned out to be ... the Segway.

Opinions The Segway HT, which stood for Human being Ship, hitting the marketplace in 2001 with starting prices around $iii,000. They quickly became a nuisance, taking upwards too much infinite on public sidewalks, and were soon subject to diverse rules and regulations. They have since been relegated to things like vacation tours and vehicles for security officers in malls and airports.

But while the Segway did not take the world by tempest, the concept—a meaty, mobile transport vehicle that can quickly take a person a few miles—has merit. Today, this has taken the class of dockless electric scooters.

I come across them as beingness of interest to those who grew up with skateboards and are transitioning to electric versions that get them around a city faster with less physical output. Indeed, while in San Francisco recently, I saw many younger folks, some dressed in suits, zipping around on scooters from companies like Bird, Lime Bike, and Spin. I myself have been tempted to rent i, but at my age, I am probably non their target customer.

Electric scooters have caught the attending of Uber and Lyft, which are now vying for five permits the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is scheduled to mitt out after this month.

Ane of the issues the SFMTA is looking at is sidewalk clutter. These companies' business concern models permit people to ditch scooters on the street when they're done; there are no docks as you might find with bike rentals.

"As part of their permit application, companies must demonstrate how they will minimize their affect on San Francisco'due south sidewalks, while maximizing their transparency to the public," the SFMTA says.

Ben Thompson argued in his Stratechery newsletter recently that scooters are "1 of the purest manifestations of...Everything equally a Service."

"The enabling factor for both Uber and Airbnb applying a services business model to concrete appurtenances is your smartphone and the net: it enables distribution and transactions costs to be nil, making information technology infinitely more user-friendly to simply rent the physical goods you lot need instead of acquiring them outright," he writes.

Thompson's perspective is important in that it places scooters in the proper context of the gig economy and how information technology could impact mobile transportation for short distances in very meaningful ways. The more I look at the office scooters could play, especially in large cities where parking is sparse and using a taxi or Uber or Lyft to go brusk distances does not make sense, the more I see Dean Kamen's Segway vision being played out. Kamen may not reap the big rewards from that original vision, but he still had a hand in delivering on it.

For further reading on this subject field, check out this New York Times piece from Kevin Roose, who went from critic to fan later using scooters for a week. TechCrunch also covered the regulatory issues and how some cities may deal with the claiming of accommodating scooter services.

About Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin is recognized every bit ane of the leading industry consultants, analysts, and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Artistic Strategies since 1981 and has provided research to nearly of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba, and numerous others. Mr. Bajarin is known as a concise, futuristic analyst, credited with predicting the desktop publishing revolution iii years earlier it hitting the market, and identifying multimedia as a major trend in written reports equally early as 1984. He has authored major manufacture studies on PC, portable calculating, …