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Planned Electric Motorcycle from Segway

By General Posts

by Florina Spînu from https://www.autoevolution.com

Hydrogen-Fueled Segway Apex H2 Makes a Stunning Appearance, Production Possible

Looking straight out of the “Tron” movie, a new electric motorcycle called Apex H2, a two-wheeler packed with neon lights and powered by hydrogen fuel cells, was shown this week by Segway’s Chinese parent company Ninebot.

Presented as a continuation of the Segway Apex that was presented a while back, the Chinese company hopes to turn the H2 into a unique product in a few years’ time.

So, what are the features of Apex H2?

First, we have a redesigned frame compared to what we were already shown, only it adds hydrogen power to the mix. More to the point, the bike should get its juice from hydrogen cylinders, which will probably be swappable and refillable. For now, not many details on these are available, given how the product is still in its early stages.

According to Ninebot, the Apex H2 will have a power output of 80 hp, and it should reachh 100 kph (62 mph) in four seconds. Additionally, the motorcycle will have a top speed of 150 kph (93 mph).

Said to be priced at approximately $10,700, the innovative motorcycle is not exactly a low-cost two-wheeled vehicle. However, considering what it promises to put on the table, it could become a strong competitor on the market. This new hybrid motorcycle is scheduled to come out in 2023.

Even though the Segway Apex is still some years away, Segway’s legacy lives on. Its latest products are e-scooters, hoverboards, and other devices that act as an extension of the human body. The company presented in 2020 the Segway S-Pod, a self-balancing chair for urban transport operated by an intuitive assistive navigation panel. It is also developing electric ATVs and dirt e-bikes.

In 2015 Segway was purchased by the Chinese competitor Ninebot, a company that raised no less than $80 million from investors like Xiaomi.

Segway: Two-Wheeled Personal Transporter Ends Production

By General Posts

by Elena Gorgan from https://www.autoevolution.com

It’s a sad day for electric two-wheelers: the iconic and often-derided personal transporter Segway, a true pioneer in urban mobility, has come to the end of life. The factory producing the PT will shut down permanently on July 15, 2020.

When it was teased back in 2001, Segway was said to come to replace the car. It would be, they said, what the car was for the horse and buggy, an invention more revolutionizing than the computer itself. The Segway, a two-wheeled personal transporter (they called it human transporter, HT, back then), was more than just a product; it was, in very simple terms, the future.

In many ways, Segway, with its self-balancing technology and versatile functionality, was a trailblazer. It never got to be as popular and commercially successful as inventor Dean Kamen thought (hoped?) it would be, but it was a revolutionary product.

It’s now time to pour one out for the Segway PT, because it’s curtain call. The Bedford, New Hampshire factory that produces it will shut down permanently on July 15, 2020, Fast Company reports. Production on the PT comes to an end, and there are no immediate plans to ever revive the product in another form.

That said, the decision is hardly surprising. For all the new ground the PT broke in terms of urban mobility, it could never attain wide appeal with the public for a very simple reason: it was – and is – too expensive. A PT still costs as much as a used motorcycle, and it only gets a top speed of 12.5 mph (20 kph) and a range of 31 miles (68 km). Considering it boasted a 10 mph (16 kph) top speed back in 2001, it’s hardly made any progress in this regard.

Judy Cai, president of Segway, believes quality also played a part in the low spread of the PT: it was too good to make a profit off, so it’s probably the opposite of what you were thinking. “We tried analyzing, how come sales cannot go up quickly? One reason, I hate to say, is the quality of it, how durable it is,” Cai explains to Fast Company.

“I talk to customers riding [an old] unit. It doesn’t look good because it’s been on the road 12 years. It has 100,000 miles on it. But the machine itself runs very well. And so when you try to sell new units [to those customers].,. unfortunately, it does hurt us,” Cai adds.

This means that, while Segway planned on selling 100,000 units of the self-balancing PT in the first year, it was only able to sell about 140,000 in total, in all these years since launch. Segway found a niche as a fleet vehicle with armed guards, police officers, airport staff and tour guides. As an actual personal vehicle for urban mobility, which is what it aimed to be from the start, it never really caught on.

The PT that could, and a legacy that lives on

Segway had big dreams for its PT in the early ‘00s. When it was rolled out at the end of 2001, with help from inventor Kamen, it was unlike anything else that the world had seen. A two-wheeler that you could control by simply leaning on it, that would be as intuitive as walking is, that would ride upright without toppling over and that could get you cruising down the street several times faster than you could walk – it was all unheard of. The self-balancing tech used for it paved the way for many other products we see today more often than we see a Segway, like hoverboards.

As the years passed and the adoption rate still failed to go up, Kamen sold the company. In 2015, Segway was bought by Chinese giant Ninebot and, today, they command a large portion of the micromobility market, with their electric kickscooters, self-balancing scooters and electric bikes.

While the Segway PT as we’ve known it for almost two decades will no longer be, the Segway name and the brand live on. So does the legacy of Segway, because the technology developed for the PT continues to be used in a variety of products, including in the S-Pod concept revealed earlier this year (basically, still the PT but with a new, chair-type form factor).

Segway tries to be sexy at CES, presents new electric motorcycle

By General Posts

 

by Chris Matyszczyk from https://www.zdnet.com/

Will this be the great victor at CES? Oh, please let that happen.

Admit it, you’ve pitied them.

The tourists, the mailpersons, the mall cops, the aging techies who now resent the future, they’re all regularly seen on Segways. Some, perhaps in a vain attempt to salvage their image, even wear a crash helmet while they ride the much-derided machine.

In recent times, though, Segway was bought by China’s Ninebot. It’s started to develop robots. Well, robotic heads that ride on Segways.

Now, though the company wants to make you drool and not because you’re laughing so much. It wants every attendee at CES 2020 to be talking about nothing other than the enormous strides Segway has made toward being alluring.

Just before Christmas it released a (possibly) dynamic video of its new Apex.

This is an electric motorbike, one that you can ride on a track. Yes, with no one else there but a camera crew.

Some may be moved that there is only one wheel at the front and one at the back.

More may be excited by the idea that this seems like a bike they’d actually be happy to be seen on, even beyond an enclosed track. It is alleged to be capable of going of going from 0-60 in 2.9 seconds and reaching 125 mph.

Some bike aficionados may, however, endure qualms. The Apex sounds less like a bike and more like a one-person metalwork factory. Moreover, the rider in the video doesn’t make it look quite like the muscly monsters that occasionally overtake me on the freeway going 100 mph. (I’m going 65, honest.) He doesn’t lean over very far, does he?

Perhaps, though, it’s a fine bike for our precarious times, one that melds dynamism and sanctimony in one glorious ride.

Naturally, this is being billed as a concept vehicle. But when excitement builds at CES, the momentum can become uncontrollable. As was witnessed last year with the award, unaward and award again of a truly innovative — so I’m reliably informed — sex toy.

Soon, we might be living in a world where Segway Apex’s are disturbing Tesla drivers on the freeway.

What could be more beautiful than that?