moving gingerly into the future

By Todd Stadler · Tuesday, December 4, 2001 5:59pm

Okay, I admit it, the Segway Human Transporter (aka HT aka Ginger aka IT (free registration required)) looks cool.

People zooming around as if on some Jetsonian hovercraft, all with the simplest of ease. It makes for a nice video (although I think the guy using it to zoom around inside his close-quarters office has issues). And the gee-whiz factor of having only two wheels is pretty high. Probably like the first time people saw a bicycle in action.

Which makes me think about why this thing is better than a bicycle. And I'm having a hard time convincing myself that it is.

Let's see. First, there's the cost. But let's assume that as they get more popular, HTs will cease to cost $3000 apiece.

Then there's the intricateness of it all. HTs may have all manner of redundant systems that are tested and tested again, but eventually, something will break. Maybe it'll break in a nice way, and you won't go crashing to the ground, but it'll still break.

When a bike breaks, the tools required are usually some allen wrenches, maybe a tire lever, and other stuff you can probably fit in a small bag. When an HT breaks, you'll need at least a masters degree in something scientific.

HTs are apparently able to go over both concrete and grass, although I have my doubts about one making its way over wet earth. Of course, bikes have been doing all that for years. In fact, people I know who ride mountain bikes would have me believe there are few places in this world they can't go. The HT's ability to ride through (some) water is similarly not unique. I also have to imagine that bikes deal better with curbs, gravel, and, if you're that kind of bike rider, going down the stairs.

I will say that the HTs are probably easier to ride up a steep hill. Mind you, nothing in the effusive literature generated thus far says much about this. Maybe its gear ratio can handle San Francisco's Russian Hill, maybe it can't. But bikes can handle it if their owners are up to it, and are clever enough to switch to a lower gear.

HTs seem to be capable of speeds up to twelve miles per hour. I personally have ridden a bike at thirty miles per hour (it was downhill, of course), and, awkward rider that I am, it freaked me out. But the point is that even the most amateur bicyclist can go faster than an HT.

And further. Bikes go as long as you do. HTs go for as long as their charge lasts. Sure, it's impressive what they'll do, given just a few hours of charging. But it's hard to beat human power for efficiency. After all, you were going to eat anyway.

Besides, any device that runs on electricity can't claim to eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels. At least not right now. The bulk of America's electrical power still comes from burning coal and oil (except in Oregon, where it comes from chopping up salmon into little bits). Clearly, electric vehicles in general and HTs specifically are far more efficient than regular automobiles. But that doesn't make it better than walking or riding a bike.

Bikes also have the advantage of being street-legal, and many cities have lanes dedicated to them. Not only has the HT been ruled "not a vehicle" by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, meaning it can't go on the streets, but it is also illegal to ride one on many cities' sidewalks, because it is a motorized vehicle. This makes Steve Jobs' claim that cities will be built around HTs more of a condition for its success than a prediction.

Of course, neither HTs nor bikes protect you from the cold, the rain, the impact of a large high-speed automobile, or the crush of humanity all around you. Nor do they carry around large amounts of cargo (or the large amounts of cargo any sales brochure might have convinced you that you will haul around) or your six children and their "tippy" cups.

In all these cases, cars are perceived as the best solution. I can't say I endorse such thinking, but even I find walking in the rain after so many hours to be depressing. I can't imagine moving three times faster through it will be that much more enjoyable, even with an umbrella.

Besides, we Americans really enjoy being sealed up in our own worlds where not only do we perceive that we are unimperilable, but we can sing along with our tunes cranked to high volumes, and for the most part be ignored by people six feet away.

If one really wanted to interact with the world around him, he wouldn't zoom through it on a scooter, he'd walk.

In short, I can't see myself changing the way I live for this invention. At least not now.

I suppose I'm just being overly cynical, but that's what people like me do when they're exposed to a year's worth of hype and marketing mystery.

Sure, it's a cool invention. But as with most cool inventions, the proof is in the five-years-later pudding.