December 3, 2001

An Inventor Unveils His Mysterious Personal Transportation Device

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Then there is the price. When the first models are expected to be available to consumers in about a year, they will cost about $3,000.

"I don't want to sound like a Ginger-slammer," said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif., "but it's about $2,000 too expensive and 40 pounds too heavy."

Even if some consumers are taken with the devices, skeptics say the social resistance to them may pose an even greater problem.

"The big question is: Will pedestrians consider them socially acceptable on the sidewalk?" said Sheila Lynch, executive director of the Northeast Advanced Vehicle Consortium, a nonprofit organization that sponsors alternative transportation projects. "I've seen a lot of promising transportation innovations, and a lot of them aren't around anymore. I thought electric bikes would be a no- brainer, and they're not doing so well."

Even though scooters are much cheaper and faster, Mr. Kamen says that the Segway, which riders stand on facing forward, feet side by side, will have much broader appeal than scooters, which require an ability to balance and brave street traffic.

But Gary Bridge, Segway's senior vice president for marketing, is acutely aware of the need to develop a code of "Segway etiquette" before introducing the device to consumers. When Mr. Kamen invited a reporter to play on the Segway, Mr. Bridge reminded him, "We don't play, we ride."

"The last thing we want is to be seen as the snowboard," Mr. Bridge added.

To avoid such associations, the first field tests of the devices are set to take place over the next few months with government agencies and corporations. The United States Postal Service, for instance, plans to try 20 units on mail routes in Concorde, N.H., and Fort Myers, Fla., starting in January. The agency hopes the devices can reduce reliance on trucks and enable mail carriers to cover more ground.

And the City of Atlanta plans to use several dozen starting in February in an effort to reduce emissions and traffic congestion in its downtown area, where many employees drive three or four miles to work.

"The idea of being able to extend somebody's willingness to be on foot from a couple of blocks to four miles makes a lot of sense for us," said Michael Dobbins, commissioner of planning development and neighborhood conservation for the City of Atlanta, who wrote Mr. Kamen a letter after reading a newspaper article about "It" earlier this year.

Ultimately, Mr. Dobbins said, other commuters may want to use the device in conjunction with public transportation.

As for whether the Segway can ever hope to live up to the hype of Ginger and It, innovation experts say it is too soon to tell.

"This seems like a machine that wants to serve humans, and maybe that's his real breakthrough," said Arthur Molella, director of the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. "But in terms of a conceptual breakthrough, we're going to see it as a breakthrough only if a whole lot of people use it."