Last month, Segway hosted an exclusive Summit in Changzhou, China, to showcase its new lineup of shared micromobility vehicles and a shift in manufacturing strategy.
One of the industry’s largest vehicle solution providers, Segway has cooperated with over 250 shared operators globally and shipped more than 2.5 million shared e-bike, e-scooter and e-moped units.
In Changzhou, the firm rounded up some of those operators together. From Dott, Voi, Bird and Ryde to Jet, Yandex, binbin and hop, the global industry convened in the city for a first look at Segway’s new launch.
Three new vehicle lines took to the stage: the R1 e-scooter, the C-series e-bikes and the F100 delivery e-bike.
Zag was on the ground in Changzhou for a first look at the vehicles and a test ride. Details of each model have remained limited with Segway drip-feeding the specs that the Summit audience was first to hear.
But now, there’s more to share on the R1 shared e-scooter.
The path to R1
The R1 marks Segway’s third-generation shared e-scooter.
Like its other two new vehicle lines, the R1 revolves around Segway’s emphasised focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – or “TCO 2.0” as the company coined in Changzhou. TCO refers to the combined cost of a product’s upfront purchase price with the indirect costs from operations, lifespan and disposal.
“Over the past few years, our industry has gone through expansion, overheating, correction and now it is in the process of recovery,” Alan Zhao, General Manager of Segway-Ninebot’s Commercial Mobility Business Division, told the audience at the Summit.
“The key question is no longer just: “How quickly can we deploy?”. Instead, it’s: “How efficiently can we operate and how sustainably can we grow?”. As our industry matures, growth is no longer our only goal. Scale still matters. But sustainable profitability matters more. That shift changes what you should expect from every vehicle.”
Zhao went on to ground the concept of TCO 2.0 in the evolving requirements that cities are placing on shared micromobility as e-bikes and e-scooters still try to prove their way into public space.
From parking provisions, safety and fleet distribution to the financial model between operators and cities, the agreements between operators and authorities are becoming more specified, more scrutinising and often more demanding.
The industry has seen what can happen when city attitudes on shared micromobility turn. The renowned cases of Paris and Prague demonstrate that cities are unafraid to backtrack and remove shared e-scooters from their streets if the systems don’t meet their requirements.
Brussels is one of the latest to follow suit, with the Belgian capital to ban shared e-scooters from next year, citing safety, parking and the use of e-scooters for criminal activity as key reasons behind the decision.
With those broader forces at play, Segway spoke of a manufacturing strategy grounding not only the R1 but all three of its new vehicle lines. That strategy aims to convince operators that the firm can help cut their operating costs to boost the bottom line and meet financial agreements with cities, while making the safety case for shared micromobility to gain access in the first place.
The R1 up close
In Changzhou, Segway’s team of executives spoke of a string of core pillars grounding the R1’s design. These are durability, uptime and serviceability, energy efficiency and safety.
On durability and service life, the R1 is said to beat Segway’s second-generation Apex series with the vehicle put through 887 tests designed around simulated shared mobility operating conditions.
What this durability comes from is a built-in IoT integrated into the e-scooter’s frame which gives greater protection against water ingress, vandalism and theft. A vehicle’s IoT connects it to the cloud, providing capabilities like vehicle tracking and location detection for fleet operators and anti-theft protection.
The controller architecture – the “brain” of the vehicle that manages power flow from the battery to the motor – is said to be 60% more durable than the second-generation Apex series. Meanwhile, the modular battery architecture aims to improve repairability with dual-housing and multi-sensor monitoring, while delivering more than a 2.2 times improvement in battery safety.
To reduce service workload, Segway has simplified its e-scooter redesign so that service teams can access the vehicle to repair only what they need to, rather than needing to waste unaffected parts. According to the firm, replacement time of the brake lever, tail light, throttle and turn signal is “much reduced”, while the R1 sees less vehicle wiring across the head unit.
Energy efficiency to operations
According to Segway, the R1 has been built to deliver 30% more range per battery swap.
Standby power has been reduced from 0.4W to 0.25W, marking nearly a 40% reduction while powertrain efficiency is reported to deliver 5% more range.
The R1’s 1,300Wh battery is coupled with solar support to keep the IoT system online even when the battery is depleted. This ensures that operators can still locate and track the vehicle at any time.
For handling during deployment and operations, the R1 comes with a foldable stem which enables it to be reset in a reported three minutes. An integrated lifting handle aims to provide a more balanced, ergonomic lift point for field teams.
On the stage in Changzhou, Zhao put these features into operational context.
“Once vehicles hit the street, the economics shift completely,” he said. “Upfront capital is paid once but operating expenses keep adding up every single day across your whole fleet. A lot of these costs are baked in from the hardware design stage.
“If a repair is complicated, every fix eats more labour hours. Higher energy consumption forces more frequent battery swaps. Too many unique spare parts blow up your inventory overhead and operational complexity.
“When you scale to thousands of units, tiny design decisions get multiplied thousands of times.”
What the rider gets
Centred around ergonomic design, the R1’s curved handlebar aims to naturally follow the rider’s hand position with controls placed nearby to improve control and reduce wrist fatigue.
A one-touch locking phone holder enables a rider to mount and lock their phone on the R1 in what Segway reports as three seconds.
The dashboard can be configured with either a dot-matrix or segment display – two different vehicle interface designs. A dot-matrix is generally regarded as the superior option with lower sunlight glare and a more intelligent interface with features like fonts and branding but it also comes at a greater cost to operators. Having the option of interface means operators can balance their costs with the rider experience, prioritising markets which see lower rider uptake with the more intelligent option.
The vehicle itself is built on puncture-resistance pneumatic tyres, aiming to combine rider stability with fewer punctures for operators to deal with.
What the city gets
What Segway believes the city gets from its latest e-scooter is greater confidence in shared micromobility to not only encourage safe riding but to further shift these vehicles away from being perceived as a public space burden.
The R1 combines various safety features and fleet management technologies that work towards that mission. Blind spot detection gives riders 120° coverage within four metres and identifies objects moving up to 20 metres away.
In Changzhou, Zag tested that feature, observing how the R1 detected a rear approaching e-bike and visually communicated this to the rider through the dashboard.
Other detection capabilities come from the traction control system which can flag when the wheel slips and adjust the drive wheel accordingly. Segway reports that this action is taken within half a second.
Meanwhile, hands-off detection can detect when riders aren’t holding the handlebar properly, with the haptic grip using vibrations to send warnings directly to the rider. Tandem riding – when two people ride on one e-scooter – is also flagged by the vehicle, as is pavement riding.
It’s only a matter of time before Segway’s vehicles show up on the streets. With its latest vehicle lineup, the firm is hoping to be the foundation of fleets that portray shared micromobility in a positive light as changing policy puts the industry to the test.
As Zhao told the audience: “Cities feel the impact of shared mobility on their public spaces every single day. Unsafe riding creates real safety concerns. At the same time, cities want better control over speed, visibility, parking, positioning and fleet management. These expectations will keep rising.
“City readiness can’t be bolted on after the vehicle is already designed. It has to be baked into the platform from day one, with technology that helps operators meet local rules without making the fleet a nightmare to run.”
