Wang Ye (CEO) Dean L. Kamen (Founder) Alex Chen Huang (President) Tony Ho (US Vice President Robotics and Business Development) Gao Lufeng (Chairman)[1]
Segway Inc. was headquartered in the U.S. state of New Hampshire and primarily marketed its products to various niche markets, including police departments, military bases, warehouses, corporate campuses, and industrial sites. It has held some key patents on designs for self-balancing personal transporters, although some of them have since expired. Since the Chinese company Ninebot acquired it in 2015, Segway has focused on developing a stronger presence in the consumer market with smaller products such as the Segway miniPro.
The first patent by Dean Kamen for a self-balancing transportation device was filed on February 23, 1993, and granted on December 30, 1997, in relation to the iBOT, a self-balancing wheelchair which he developed at DEKA, a company that he had founded in 1982.[2] That patent has since expired,[2] although it was followed by various others, and some patents assigned to the company have not yet expired (as of early 2019).[3]
Development of the iBOT started in 1990 with the first working prototypes available in 1992. In late 1994, DEKA signed a deal with Johnson & Johnson to manufacture the unit, with Johnson & Johnson paying for all subsequent R&D with DEKA received a smaller royalty fee than normal in return for their retaining rights to all non-medical applications of the technology. The iBOT was revealed to the public on Dateline NBC in a segment by John Hockenberry on June 30, 1999.[4][5]
Segway Inc. was founded in July 1999 to develop non-medical applications for the self-balancing technology, and the Segway PT, a two-wheeled personal transporter, was launched in December 2001,[6] with first deliveries to customers in early 2002.
When it was launched in December 2001, the annual sales target was 40,000 units,[7] and the company expected to sell 50,000 to 100,000 units in the first 13 months.[8] By 2003, the company had sold 6,000 units, and by September 2006 approximately 23,500,[9] when all units sold up to that point were recalled[9] due to a software glitch that could cause the units to reverse, potentially causing riders to fall off.[10] In a March 2009 interview, a company official said the firm "has shipped over 50,000" Segway PTs.[11]
Segway Inc's investors remained optimistic. Dean Kamen predicted that the Segway "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy"[12] and John Doerr, a venture capitalist who invested in the company,[13] predicted that Segway Inc would be the fastest company to reach US$1 billion in sales.[12]
By 2007, cumulative sales were 30,000 units.[13] Critics pointed to Segway Inc's silence over its financial performance as an indication that the company was still not profitable, following expenditure of some US$100 million developing the Segway PT.[12]
James Norrod served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Segway Inc. from April 2005 to January 2010 and steered the sale of the company to a group led by British millionaire Jimi Heselden, chairman of Hesco Bastion in December 2009.[17] After the sale, Dean Kamen was no longer involved with the company. Ten months after buying the company, Heselden died after he accidentally drove a Segway off a cliff.[18][19][20][21]
In February 2013, Summit Strategic Investments, LLC, announced it had acquired the company for $9 million, saying that it planned to refocus, grow its product portfolio and expand its worldwide network. In September 2014, Segway filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission about the infringement of several of its patents by several Chinese companies, including Ninebot, Shenzhen INMOTION Technologies and Robstep Robot.[22] Two years later, on April 1, 2015, Summit Strategic Investments sold the company for more than $75 million.[23]
On April 1, 2015, Segway was acquired by Ninebot Inc., a Beijing-based transportation robotics startup that had raised $80M USD from Xiaomi and Sequoia Capital.[24]
In May 2016, it was announced that the Segway miniPRO, a smaller self-balancing scooter, would be launched in June that year.[25]
In June 2018, after initially announcing that production of the Segway PT would move from Bedford, New Hampshire to China, the company decided to keep most of its production in its New Hampshire facility.[26][27]
On July 15, 2020, Ninebot ceased production of the Segway PT and laid off the 21 employees working at the Bedford, New Hampshire plant.[28]
Pivot to E-bikes and becoming major shareholder of Sur-ron ebikes[edit]
In 2019, Sur-Ron, a privately held company, announced major investments from Segway with plans to design an ebike for Segway and off-road motorcycles.[29]
The Segway dirt e-bike model x260 and x160 were officially revealed at the SEMA 2019 show.[30]
In 2021, Segway introduced the Navimow Segway, an autonomous robotic lawn mower which operates using GPS and eliminates the dependency on perimeter wiring.
^Kemper, Steve (2003). Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World. Harvard Business Press. p. 53. ISBN9781578516735.
^"Segway company owner rides scooter off cliff, dies". NBC News. Retrieved February 3, 2022. A British businessman, who bought the Segway company less than a year ago, died after riding one of the scooters off a cliff and into a river near his Yorkshire estate.
^United States International Trade Commission: "Complaint of Segway Inc. and Deka Products Limited Partnership under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, as Amended." 9 September 2014. Available on Segway's websiteArchived May 1, 2015, at the Wayback Machine.
