Segue to the Future

Members of the baby boom generation may not be getting the hover cars or personal helicopters that the futurists of their youth forecasted, but it appears they will have a self-balancing, battery-powered two-wheel scooter. As the focus of one of the biggest hype campaigns in recent memory, the Segway scooter is slowly being rolled out to U.S. consumers at $5,000 a pop.

The Twin Cities’ first Segway was sold and delivered in January to young urbanites Tod Lane and Nell Rueckl after Tod entered an essay contest for the privilege of being an “early adopter.” The two also received a Willie Wonkaesque tour of inventor Dean Kamen’s factory in New Hampshire. The Whittier couple are exactly the kind of product evangelists that marketers dream about: Tod reeled off statistics and facts about the machine’s masterful engineering, and Nell, who uses the Segway to commute to her Northeast Minneapolis massage studio, talked about how graceful she feels, whirring quietly down Nicollet Mall.

Its quiet efficiency may be the Segway’s undoing. For safety concerns, San Francisco has banned the two-wheeler from its sidewalks even before the device really arrived there. “Ever since that came out about San Francisco, I’ve been stressed out, thinking, ‘Oh no, I need to make friends on the sidewalk, and on the street, be nice to them,’” said Nell. “I don’t want to be zooming around and scaring people.”

Although the Segway can go as fast as 12 miles per hour, Tod said that some of the safety concerns about the Segway on sidewalks are misguided, because unlike bikes, which are already banned from most walks, the Segway doesn’t need to be moving forward to balance upright. “You can ride this thing more slowly than you could comfortably walk, or you can easily ride alongside someone who is walking and carry on a conversation,” he said.

Despite this tag-team sales job, The Rake was still skeptical, until we had a chance to try it out. There is just no getting around it: This thing is cool! You step up on the footpad (“Aircraft-grade aluminum,” said Tod), hang on to the handlebars, and the thing balances itself. A slight lean forward and the Segway begins to creep ahead; stand up straight, and it stops. Turn the grip on the left handlebar and the thing spins around. It’s like you’re standing atop Harry Potter’s magic lawn fertilizer. Four stars—our highest recommenda-tion!—Dan Gilchrist


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