The much heralded Segway scooter was supposed to turn the travel world on its head.
It didn’t.
This was rather unfortunate for such a cool invention. The “personal transporter” never really caught on with the general public, partly because it just wasn’t very practical. Like nearly everyone who has seen one in operation, I’d love to own the thing myself, but I’m not dropping $5000 for what really amounts to a toy. Other than tooling around for the fun of it, I can’t really see a practical reason for actually owning it.
Segway is hoping to put an end to such line of thinking with their second generation model, the X2 Adventure.
The nerds behind the science have tricked out the old model and converted it into an off-road player with all-terrain wheels.
Wow.
Does this mean we can take it hiking?
According to the Segway website, the X2 “will go practically anywhere in the wild that you want to go, whether it’s along nature trails, over hilly terrain or on the beach.”
Segway also promises that the wide wheel base will ensure “minimal environmental impact” wherever you happen to take it. Hmm… I wonder how park rangers are going to feel about this toy lumbering along their trails and hiking paths? I’m sure they are working on legislation right now to ban it. I can tell you one thing, however, I’m going to be rather pissed if I spend all day backpacking into some back country lake only to be overtaken the last mile by a couple of yahoos tooling by on their Segways.
Fortunately for such circumstances, they can’t go very far or very fast. The X2 can travel only 12.5 mph and has a maximum ranger of 12 miles. And if you run out of juice in the back country, you’re screwed.
Cost: $5,995