I'll take two ...
I can see Kamen's partners' uses as indicative of early adopters: industrial for large spaces (Amazon's warehouses, and a million others), military, law enforcement. There's a few million units in 2002/2003
Consumer units will sell in the fractional millions, imo, even at the new $3k price point, but multiple millions if they can cut that substantially. That's for urban use.
What's interesting to me is usage in rural areas on ranches, etc.
Basically, if the price is right, and energy density is sufficient w. battery and engine tech improving yearly, it's a desirable improvement anywhere that needs human locomotion in a one or two-mile orbit.
Kamen's example was interesting - a commuter w/in 3 miles of work. It'd be interesting to look up what % of those would be, and how much faster/better/cheaper life would be not to have a car or take a bus, etc.
The biggest value-add is in the software that embeds realtime stabilization, and the mech which hopefully can be mass-produced in a declining cost curve, down maybe to kiddie units for a few hundred bucks. |
