BusinessWeek runs a piece about the Segway’s lack of marketplace segue.
The Segway is an example of bad design. By that I don’t mean that it isn’t a seductive and innovative object, but it is an example of innovative engineering rather than design. Design includes how something fits into context i.e. society and the Segway is a Cuckoo.
Like Kamen, Clive Sinclair is an impressive innovator, after a string of successes he launched an electric vehicle the C5, which was intended ” to herald a new era of ecological personal transport”.
“The Sinclair C5 was a commercial disaster. The Press hounded it as a dangerous joke. Only around 12,000 C5’s were ever produced, many sold off abroad after the project folded. “
The Segway is the new C5.
BW Online | January 16, 2003 | Is Segway Going Anywhere?
Workers at businesses and municipalities that have tested the transporters aren’t exactly sending in rave reviews, either. “You can’t keep warm if you’re not walking,” says a postal worker in Concord, N.H. “You end up like a frozen popsicle on a stick.”