I haven't seen much in the way of projections for using IT as a tiny truck-like vehicle as in a one-person golf cart, or a trip to a grocery store and back with the groceries. I live 3/4 of a mile from a large (for this town) mall, 1 mile from another shopping center, about 1-1/2 miles from my work and approx. 3 miles from a golf and country club. There are bike lanes all over my town. All of which could be accessed quite nicely and efficiently, without disrupting normal vehicular traffic, on a Segway Human Intuitive Transporter (VBG - I just wanted to be first to corrupt the acronym S.H.T. into S.H.I.T. heh heh).
But seriously folks. A seat with a backrest that opens to reveal a carrying space for up to 4 grocery bags or a set of golf clubs might be just the thing for retirement communities. Especially if there was a trailng dead 3rd wheel or 3rd and fourth wheels for safety. Lowering the center of gravity by having a seated operator would add to the safety and comfort for seniors and others who may be physically challenged to some degree. Typical daily usage might consist of going to the club on you SHT to play golf in the morning and placing your golf clubs on the same SHT, play a round of golf, go to a supermarket and drive up and down the aisles gathering groceries and then home and park it in the garage, taking up no more space than a child's tricycle.
Should also be easy enough to make a more powerful (Stirling engined?) 2-seater side-by-side or tandem version that would be legal for bike lanes/routes and golf courses.
The current $3k for a basic bare bones model is a bit much for my tastes, but $3k+ for my 2-seater golf cart/shopper model would be worth it to me.
Some more uses: deliveries of all kinds, pizza, newspapers, anything that is delivered now and maybe some that aren't. Utility attachments like a garden tiller, snowplow or blower, a shop-vac, lawn mower, leaf raker, hedge trimmer, etc, etc. A lot of seniors and others hire these things done because they can't handle the manual work themselves. If the attachments could be made with a really easy quick connect/disconnect mechanism, Kamen and his investors could indeed have themselves a gold mine.
Big drawback: Ginger Snaps (pun intended): the SHT version of car-jackings.
Chas |
