by Chris Matyszczyk from https://www.zdnet.com/
Will this be the great victor at CES? Oh, please let that happen.
Admit it, you’ve pitied them.
The tourists, the mailpersons, the mall cops, the aging techies who now resent the future, they’re all regularly seen on Segways. Some, perhaps in a vain attempt to salvage their image, even wear a crash helmet while they ride the much-derided machine.
In recent times, though, Segway was bought by China’s Ninebot. It’s started to develop robots. Well, robotic heads that ride on Segways.
Now, though the company wants to make you drool and not because you’re laughing so much. It wants every attendee at CES 2020 to be talking about nothing other than the enormous strides Segway has made toward being alluring.
Just before Christmas it released a (possibly) dynamic video of its new Apex.
This is an electric motorbike, one that you can ride on a track. Yes, with no one else there but a camera crew.
Some may be moved that there is only one wheel at the front and one at the back.
More may be excited by the idea that this seems like a bike they’d actually be happy to be seen on, even beyond an enclosed track. It is alleged to be capable of going of going from 0-60 in 2.9 seconds and reaching 125 mph.
Some bike aficionados may, however, endure qualms. The Apex sounds less like a bike and more like a one-person metalwork factory. Moreover, the rider in the video doesn’t make it look quite like the muscly monsters that occasionally overtake me on the freeway going 100 mph. (I’m going 65, honest.) He doesn’t lean over very far, does he?
Perhaps, though, it’s a fine bike for our precarious times, one that melds dynamism and sanctimony in one glorious ride.
Naturally, this is being billed as a concept vehicle. But when excitement builds at CES, the momentum can become uncontrollable. As was witnessed last year with the award, unaward and award again of a truly innovative — so I’m reliably informed — sex toy.
Soon, we might be living in a world where Segway Apex’s are disturbing Tesla drivers on the freeway.
What could be more beautiful than that?
