The original design of the Segway, the Segway PT, is to end production according to a report from The Fast Company. The two-wheeled iconic design is to be retired in July, resulting in 21 redundancies at the Bedford, New Hampshire factory.
At the time of writing, the latest PT was available from the official Segway website for $6,124.
It won’t be the end of the Segway brand, which was sold by Segway inventor Dean Kamen in 2009 and then again to Chinese company Ninebot in 2015. Ninebot will continue to manufacture scooters and approximations of the old Segway design in other products, but it’s the end of the road for the PT, the two-wheel upright Segway with handles.
Segway first hit the market in late 2001 but struggled to gain market traction. Fast Company reports that the company projected 100,000 sales of the PT in the first 13 months but only 140,000 have been sold ever. Ouch.
The size, design and price stunted the Segway from the get-go. It couldn’t shake the embarrassing place it found in popular culture, and with a $5,000 start price wasn’t exactly for the everyman. New Yorkers stuck to their yellow cabs.
With a top speed of around 12mph, you could cycle faster and get fit while doing it. The Segway PT became more a symbol of the dot com bubble, a hyped idea that in reality became a mainstay of weird inner-city tourist tours. That and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, obviously.
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.