GM decided to make a "personal transport" concept. They partnered up with (fucking) Segway and came up with this, which they've been touting at car shows:
Wow. I've seen backhoes with more style and panache.
And this is after Toyota has already been showing off - and planning to put into production - their "personal transport" concept called the iWheel (or iReal, depending on who you ask):
Explain to me again why GM deserves billions of taxpayer dollars? And how they will use it to turn around their company?
3 comments:
To be fair, the pictures of it with actual doors make it look more realistically useful. If you had asked me to draw a two-person Segway with doors, that's pretty much exactly what I would have come up with.
What makes me roll my eyes is when I hear company execs talking about how they hope cities will build special driving lanes for these things. It reminds me of all the Segway "It" hype, and the utopian visions they were spouting about cities with special magical rainbow Segway tracks everywhere. Didn't happen, ain't gonna happen, no way.
It's a cool concept, I guess, but I can't see anyone actually buying any outside of some high-end golf courses. Given that the original Segway was $4,500, I doubt the Puma would be any less than 12-15k.
I think Tata has a better Idea going with the Nano, getting back to the days of the "people's car", with a $2,500 price tag. I'd be sorely tempted to buy one of those, or something similar even if it cost twice as much. Too bad we'll never see any on this side of the pond.
The Tata Nano is cheap because it's built cheap and lacks important engineering and safety features. It's the LAST thing we need over here.
This is what happens when you build a society based on entitlement. Eventually the businesses expect the same government handouts that many citizens (as well as non-citizens) expect.
I wonder what businesses would do if we suddenly went back to the way things were before businesses had the rights of citizens? Imagine if they couldn't go to the government with a sob story about needing help...
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