www.makezine.com/04/interview
The Segway is a beautiful piece of design and speeds with humans, then stop, back up, and
engineering, no doubt. However, it competes spin around. I think bicycles are wonderful. And
with some pretty simple and efficient alterna- there are hundreds of millions of them out there.
tives, like scooters, bicycles, and walking. Do you I don’t think that they compete with the Segway
ever wonder if, with the Segway, you created a because while they have many advantages at
modern-day south-pointing chariot? higher speeds and longer distances, they are
poor at low speeds involving lots of stops and
I worry about this with every product we make. tight turns. By contrast, a Segway is designed To me, a south-pointing chariot is any product to use the same infrastructure that pedestrians that, even when it was first conceived, was not use, occupy the same footprint as a pedestrian, the best solution to the problem. Right now, be highly flexible, mobile, and safe, while increas-people use cars for most of their travel for any- ing the user’s transportation efficiency 300- thing beyond a few hundred yards. Most people 400%. I think that’s pretty terrific. that we know won’t walk one or two miles to get somewhere — they just won’t. To walk a couple The AutoSyringe, Segway, iBOT, Stirling genera- of miles would take a half-hour to an hour, and tor — all of these products addressed nuances of we live in an era where time is compressed and problems that nobody else seemed to recognize. so valuable. Over 50% of the car trips in the For example, the iBOT enables the wheelchair- United States are less than three miles. The aver- bound to interact with people at eye level, tra- age speed within the city limits between any two verse stairs and uneven terrain, and be remotely points within the 20 largest cities of the world is operated so that its owner can navigate it into a less than 9 mph. Then why does everybody use vehicle. How do you attain such a deep under- his or her car to get around? Because walking is standing of the problems you seek to solve? less than 2 mph!
So what if you could give people in cities an I try to understand the basic laws of nature. alternative to walking for distances greater than Beyond this, I do very little research as to what 100 yards and less than a few miles? People gen- the product should be. You would never get erally don’t walk, because even in a congested the iBOT by doing research on wheelchairs. If city, walking is four times slower than taking you do “product research,” the product that a cab. But, what if they could get on a Segway you end up with will be similar to what already and cruise from start to finish at 8 mph? That’s exists. For example, if you went out to people the same speed at which a taxi travels. And, it’s who make wheelchairs and said, “I want to cost effective, energy efficient, environmentally make the next great improvement,” they would friendly, and fun. In highly dense urbanized areas typically conduct focus groups with people who where buses and cars do not work well — they use wheelchairs. And these wheelchair users, have only been used to fill the gap for lack of a operating within the context of their existing good alternative — the Segway shines. I would wheelchairs, might ask for things like a new cup argue that a car, when used in the city, is in fact holder. They saw a great cup holder in a minivan, a south-pointing chariot. If a better solution and realized that their wheelchair didn’t have comes along in the next 20 years to address one. So they ask for a cup holder, or some other the rapidly worsening inner city transportation incremental improvement. You have to start with problem, then the Segway may become a south-pointing chariot. But so far, I have not seen a better solution.
So what about a bicycle? It is cheap, reliable, and electronics workshop. inexpensive.
A bicycle cannot mix effectively in a congested pedestrian environment. It can’t move at walking
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