Toyota Announces the Winglet, Wannabe Segway Killer 227
Various gadget/toy venues are writing about the Toyota Winglet, a diminutive Segway-like personal transporter. (Toyota took over Sony's robot division a year back.) It comes in three sizes and offers about a third the speed and a quarter the range of the Segway; on the upside, it charges in an hour vs. Segway's 10 hours. Wired writes: "The Winglet is the first gadget to duplicate the celebrated, and often mocked, navigation system of the Segway Transporter."
Or you could just oh I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Undead, perhaps? (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems much more like a resurrection of the concept behind the Segway rather than a Segway killer. I actually want this to take off.
Small wheels (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, I don't have to take a very big bump in the road to fall with these.
Re:Range (Score:5, Insightful)
It has a range of 5km. But it's so small I can probably use it to drive from my car to grocery store on opposite side of parking lot.
This could be the answer to that ubiquitous American dilemma: How can I get from one end of Walmart's parking lot to the other without getting any actual excercise?
Re:There is something to kill? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen one perfectly valid use of the segway, and having travelled the same area for the same length of time, agree it would be worthwhile: Large Conventions. Seriously. If you have a convention you're going to be at for 12+ hours out of a day, spanning anywhere from a quarter to 2 miles (think fairgrounds perhaps here) then being able to hang a ride on a device like that could be a godsend for your legs (when I was doing it on foot I barely had enough energy left to either walk the half mile back to my hotel, or worse yet the half mile to my car followed by a commute out of town to my hotel.) For things like that it makes perfect sense. And according to the guy I talked to who had one, it used basically no power while idle, so if you plan out your route through the convention center well, you can spend all day there and only use perhaps 3/4 of your charge. Furthermore there ARE people with knee and hip injuries who it would help feel less bad about their condition that running around on canes/crutches/wheelchairs. Look I'm hip I've got a segway. It's not that I can't walk, I'm just too cool to do it! :)
Just my 2 cents.
Re:There is something to kill? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There is something to kill? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. If you have a convention you're going to be at for 12+ hours out of a day, spanning anywhere from a quarter to 2 miles (think fairgrounds perhaps here) then being able to hang a ride on a device like that could be a godsend for your legs (when I was doing it on foot I barely had enough energy left to either walk the half mile back to my hotel, or worse yet the half mile to my car followed by a commute out of town to my hotel.)
No offense, but if you have trouble walking 2 miles in a couple of hours, you should probably use every opportunity to get some exercise.
Your point about Segways being a kind of hipper wheelchair makes sense, though.
Re:Or you could just oh I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a physically demanding job, yet cannot show up to work after breaking a sweat? Either your job isn't physically demanding, or you think that sweat is only worth sweating out if you're being paid for it.
And if you haven't got the energy left for a 10km ride on a bicycle at the end of the day, then how on earth do you have the energy to stand on a Segway for an hour?
I call your post BS, and I call your ass tubby.
Re:There is something to kill? (Score:2, Insightful)
What about bicycles (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd think that a comparatively cheap electric-powered motorized bicycle (targeted at college students and the like) would do a lot better than something dorky-looking like this.
Re:There is something to kill? (Score:3, Insightful)
I had the chance to try out a Segway a few years ago, and the salesman told me they were pitching it at three main market segments:
1. The elderly. As has already been mentioned in this discussion, a Segway can be used as a "hipper wheelchair". For elderly folk with limited mobility (i.e. they no longer have the energy required to pedal their bikes through possibly hilly areas) a Segway provides a faster, more elegant, and, yes, cooler alternative to an electronic wheelchair.
2. Large factories / industrial complexes. I don't know how many of you have been on larger industrial sites, but there are some fsking huge complexes out there: BASF's 10 sqkm Ludwigshafen site [photobucket.com] springs to mind. They get around that having several thousand bikes for the employees to ride, but a high level manager may not want to arrive to his/her next meeting hot and sweaty from having biked from one side of the complex to the other. Plus, a Segway clearly outranks a bike (while still being more convenient / environmentally friendly than a chauffeured car).
3. Celebrities. Seriously, how cool do people look on Segways, huh? Tell me Gob [wikipedia.org] isn't at his sexiest when he makes his entrance on one of these babies.
So, notwithstanding that I made that last reason up, there are at least two valid markets for the Segway as a product.
The main problems, according to the salesman, were – aside from the cost – the unfamiliarity of people with the concept of two-wheeled vehicles that don't require you to do the balancing*, and the ambiguous legal classification: is it a bike? Is it a car? Can you use it on the footpath, or are you relegated to the streets? Given the responsiveness of the Segway and the target market, the makers were hoping to get it allowed on the footpath, but a combination of the its weight and speed nixed that idea, and it's too exposed for the roads. Thus, at least in Australia, Segways are illegal on both footpaths and roads – a wonderful precondition for commercial success!
However, once the regulatory problems are solved, and people get over the "WTF is that?" factor, I foresee a great future in these kind of devices (if not the Segway itself, since it'll probably be outdated by that time). I'm a little baffled by the Segway's negative image, to be honest, but I'm also baffled at the relative unpopularity of Tablet PCs, which I consider to be the bees knees.
The Segway and its ilk provide the short-range mobility of a bicycle, with close to zero effort. And folks – convenience sells.
*Most people get on and immediately try and adjust for the Segway, leaning forwards or backwards. Since the Segway adjusts for the user, and responds to leaning by accelerating in that direction, these people finding themselves on a 'bucking' Segway until they figure out they have to stand still to.. well, stand still. I had very little problems with this, but I've got good balance (and great hair. But never mind that.)
What I found insufferable was the way the turning trigger was toggled: roll your left hand forwards and you turn left; roll it backwards, and you turn left. This struck me as being incredibly counter-intuitive, perhaps also because I'd met the salesman in the park when I was riding home from work and your wrists roll the other way on a bicycle (though also on a steering wheel).
The sweaty effect of humid climates (Score:4, Insightful)
The amount of sweat you will emit is highly correlated with the amount of training.
Right there you show your ignorance. Try riding a bike ANYWHERE in a humid climate and tell me how dry you stay. Or just a plain hot climate -- try riding your bike 5 miles to work when it's 90F outside.
Report back when your education is complete.
Re:Or you could just oh I don't know (Score:3, Insightful)
That sir, is a feature, not a bug.
You're completely insane to even think about it. One is quite enough.
Re:Early abandoners. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen a few places where security guards have them to patrol parking lots, which seems like a really good application.
As for the "killer" moniker, I'm so tired of hearing it that I think it needs to be forcibly retired.
Handicapped users... (Score:3, Insightful)
As a handicapped "mobility impaired" person I would very much like to have something similar to this: small, light, easy to use, and, I assume, reliable.
While I'm no longer in the wheelchair I spent three years in, I am limited in how far I can walk, even with assistance - after about 200 feet I've hit my limit. :o(
Something like this unit just might extend my range enough to be able to get around in a mall, or even a larger store while standing.
That would be much better than a wheelchair in a number of ways... Since it puts weight on the legs, it helps to maintain skeletal strength, being lighter than the typical powered wheelchair or motorized scooter mobility aid (which can weigh up to 600 pounds including occupant) it could be safer for others as well as easier to transport, and instead of rolling about with my face at crotch level, I'd be eye-to-eye with other humans.
If the cost ends up reasonable, I'll be looking into one once it makes it's debut.
--Tomas
Re:Or you could just oh I don't know (Score:2, Insightful)
And don't say, "Move to a place that does," since that's such a cop-out to a solution. Of course, this does include the Segway and Winglet, and all other alternative modes of transportation. I do support them all. However, most towns and cities refuse to build sidewalks near heavily trafficked areas, and in newly developing areas, because it costs more. And most people aren't willing to pay the taxes to pay for the work, but then they turn around and complain that there's nowhere safe to ride a bicycle, except the highway
Example: Where I live, the only public place to safely ride a bicycle is in a park
It's a nasty loop of irresponsibility. And it's difficult to know whether building bike lanes and sidewalks will encourage more cycling and segways, or vice-versa.
Back to my point: As much as I love seeing how many more alternative forms of transportation there are, and growing, I find it sad that a large number of people are not ready or willing to do what is necessary to make much of it usable.
Re:Or you could just oh I don't know (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree most people should walk, but where you're seeing Segways being used, I think, there's a benefit. There's nothing wrong with making the job of some security guy easier. I've seen these at the Atlanta airport, where the train system is like a mile long, and several classes of employees need to go all the way from the main terminal to the end and back, and they don't need to wait for the train system (which can be quite crowded at times anyway).
Sure, the fat asses of the world ought to walk to Starbucks to get their cake-in-a-cup, but I don't see the problem with someone working in a giant warehouse or something similar having one of these kinds of things... they get their faster and less fatigued.
Re:Some people just keep spare clothes at work (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to live in Florida too, and biking there was much more feasable. We had maybe a month or two where it was in the 80's in the morning, but the rest of the year it was beautiful. All the streets there had bike lanes too! Then I moved to Oklahoma. Suddenly, unless you work at a stables or a distillery or something, there's also the issue of body odor. Without showers at work, riding a bike here is hopeless all but about 3 months of the year.
Something that requires no exercise but has no climate control (like a Segway or scooter) is still only doable here in the middle of the continental US about 6 months out of the year. I've found that if its over 90F, I sweat like a pig just being out in the sun for more than about 10 minutes (Today its forcast to get to 105). In the Winter, we spend about 3 months under freezing in the mornings. For those "good" months in the Spring and Fall we tend to get torrential downpours. Oh, and *no* streets here have bike lanes. Half don't even have shoulders or sidewalks.