Segway Was Supposed to Replace the Car. He Died Preventing a Fall On One.

In September 2010, a man died riding the exact kind of vehicle his own company had spent a decade promising would make falling obsolete. He wasn't the inventor. He was the man who had bought the company less than a year earlier. This is the story of the Segway: a secret invention backed by Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, unveiled to a crowd that was visibly unimpressed, sold to a British businessman who died riding one off a cliff near his own estate, bought again by the Chinese company it had once sued for copying it, and finally retired in 2020 after 19 years and about 140,000 units sold — fewer than a mid-size car company sells in a few weeks. Sources: Wikipedia articles on Segway, Segway Inc., Dean Kamen, and Jimi Heselden; contemporary reporting on the 2001 Ginger launch, the 2003 sales figures, the 2010 death of Jimi Heselden, the 2015 Ninebot acquisition, and the 2020 end of production. Where accounts differ, they are described as accounts.