What the Recall Reveals About Segway

The latest glitch with its flagship product shows why the company may still have trouble fulfilling its enormous expectations.

The best that companies forced to deal with a product recall can hope for is that the product in question was never very popular in the first place. That's the case for Segway, the maker of the futuristic two-wheeled "personal transporter" that was supposed to revolutionize how we all get around. Except the Segway being recalled happens to be the company's flagship product, and the limited scope of the recall shows once and for all— as suspected by pretty much anyone with a pair of eyes and a passing interest in the device—how relatively few of the brilliantly designed if impractical machines have actually been sold.