A page in the history of soft mobility turns with the cessation of production of the iconic Segway PT model on July 15. Production of the SE-3 Patroller will also be stopped on the same date. The two machines left the chains of the factory of Bedford, in New Hampshire (United States), which will be hard hit by the decision, indicates the site Fast Company .
Twenty-one employees who worked there will be laid off, twelve others have their jobs temporarily saved. The latter will notably take care of repairs, maintenance and warranty operations concerning the Segway copies already sold. Five employees will remain on the job to ensure the production of the Segway Discovery scooter.
An innovation that didn't work
Dean Kamen nevertheless hoped to revolutionize the world of transport with his original Segway, refined for ten years and offered to the general public in December 2001. The individual vehicle requiring a certain sense of balance was then sold for about 4,500 euros. Its creator estimated at the time that the machine "would be to the car what the car had been to horses and horse-drawn carriages".
He was not the only one to expect much from the Segway, about which the wildest rumors circulated in the early 2000s before its release. Steve Jobs had for example announced that the invention of Dean Kamen would be more revolutionary than the PC. But the device has never sold millions of copies, as the engineer imagined. In twenty years, only 140,000 vehicles have been sold.
Dean Kamen's business was sold in 2009 and then bought by the Chinese Ninebot in 2015. The latter also announces for 2021 the release of the Segway S-Pod in which the user can sit.
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