That’s the end of the Segway, company to close production line on July 15

prasad1 · Jun 27, 2020

Police officers patrol on Segways as men wearing protective face masks run along the promenade at Marine Drive, after authorities eased lockdown restrictions that were imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Mumbai, India, June 12, 2020. REUTERS/Hemanshi Kamani (REUTERS)

The Segway, one of the best ways to get around eastern European cities and some shopping malls, is going off the market. The company is ceasing production next month.

A report by Fast Company states that Segway is closing its production line on July 15. They will also be letting go 21 employees while 12 will retain their jobs to temporarily handle warranties and repairs.

There’s no information about how long the company will continue to support the last outgoing models but a support network has sprung up on Reddit that has fans and owners sharing maintenance tips and repair instructions for motorized skateboards and a separate community for Segways exclusively might spring up too. After all, it’s Reddit.

Segway machines are actually quite well built with Segway’s VP of business development Tony Ho saying that there are machines out there with over 100,000 miles on the clock that still work perfectly.

Before the Segway was launched it was hyped by the biggest names in tech. Steve Jobs had even said it would be bigger than the personal computer.

However, in its 20-year life, Segway sold just 140,000 units. This was a failure considering the company had predicted it would sell 100,000 in the first 13 months after product launch.

While production may be ending, the technology was revolutionary and it led to a bunch of intellectual property for the company. Segway has over 1,000 active patents on self-balancing technology, which are still going to be used in its upcoming products.