Segway Owners a Small, Happy Club [Archive]

Casey

12-12-2002, 10:43 AM

quote:Segway Owners a Small, Happy Club

By Leander Kahney

02:00 AM Dec. 12, 2002 PT

A few lucky buyers got their hands on the first batch of Segways, but there's a problem: Everyone else wants to ride them.

So acute is the quandary of getting people off the two-wheeled contraptions once they're on them, Segway is training some customers in gently but firmly coaxing riders down.

The Segway Human Transporter is inventor Dean Kamen's self-balancing electronic scooter. Although companies and government agencies all over the country have been testing Segways for months, the first consumer models have been on the streets for only a couple of weeks.

"I was just blown away," said Chris Johnson, president of Certified Parts Warehouse, a computer parts company located in Exeter, New Hampshire, who got his Segway last week. "In fact, I was so blown away, I immediately bought a second one."

Johnson's extra transporter is for companions who want to go riding with him. "It's like having only one scuba diving suit," he explained. "If you want to take a girlfriend or buddy diving, you've got to have another one."

To qualify to buy the two $5,000 Segways he owns, Johnson had to enter a short essay competition. Segway is taking preorders for the transporters through an exclusive Amazon deal, but most of those machines won't be delivered until next March. Meanwhile, 30 lucky customers get the chance to buy a Segway (or two) for penning a 75-word essay.

About a dozen winners already have their Segways, and a dozen more will get theirs in the next few days. The company will select the remaining six winners next week. The deadline for all entries is Dec. 16 at midnight.

As part of the deal, Segway is flying winners to company headquarters in New Hampshire for a two-day training course, which includes dinner with Dean Kamen and a tour of his amazing home.

"I thought he'd be this quirky, shy inventor," Johnson said, "but he's an incredibly good host. Warm, friendly, charming and visionary.... His house is just mind-boggling. It's bigger than our warehouse. He's got giant steam engines, there's helicopters in the garage and an underground swimming pool. He treated you like a new friend and he was just showing you around."

Johnson bought his Segway for his mile-and-a-half commute to work. He was sick of sitting in traffic, isolated in his car, burning up fossil fuels.

"When you're driving, you're always calling everyone else on the road an *******," Johnson said. "The Segway is not that way. People are smiling and wanting to chat. It's totally different. It's nice."

When Johnson takes his Segways to the park, kids ask if he's Dean Kamen and beg for a ride. At work, almost everyone at his 40-person company has ridden them around the warehouse.

"There's a big smile and they don't want to get off," Johnson said. "They taught us in training class how to get people off: Grab the center post and say, 'Let me show you how to dismount now.' That was a very useful demo."

Segway is planning similar training classes in February in various cities around the country, in advance of the March deliveries. The company isn't saying how many orders it has received. "It's going well," said spokeswoman Carla Vallone. "We're happy."

Apart from the novelty, one of the central reasons customers are buying Segways is to wean themselves off fossil fuels. "A lot of people are into electric vehicles, zero-emissions, alternative power and alternative transportation," Vallone said.

Johnson said he agreed with what Kamen said about fossil-fuel dependence during Johnson's visit to the inventor's house. "We're willing to do outrageous things for oil, like going to war, and we're wasting a lot of it," he said. "It's crazy."

Like Johnson, Phillip Torrone bought two Segways -- the other for his wife Beth -- because he wanted to make his two-mile-a-day commute environmentally friendly.

Torrone, director of product development for Fallon Worldwide, located in Seattle, was thinking of buying a hybrid electric car, but decided everything he did -- movies, shopping, work -- was in Segway distance.

Torrone is selling his tricked-out Mazda Miata to cover costs. He figures he's saving $16,000 on car expenses by spending $10,000 on the Segways. The couple is keeping their other car for longer weekend trips.

"I did the math," he said. "The only time I need the car is when I'm with my wife and we go somewhere. I'm about two or three miles away from everything in the world I could want."

Torrone is so delighted with his Segways, he's created an online Segway diary, which includes pictures of the Segway being delivered and unwrapped, and videos of Torrone riding it around a park.

"Every time we go out, people smile," Torrone said. "It's a license to talk to everyone."