Can Segway save GM?
General Motors and Segway think small with an electric rickshaw-type vehicle
General Motors may be close to bankruptcy, said Jim Motavalli in The New York Times, but it’s “still in the business of creating dreams.” It’s latest—being unveiled Tuesday at the New York auto show—is a collaboration with Segway: a two-wheel, two-seat rickshaw-like electric pod that drives up to 35 miles per hour for up to 35 hours on a single charge of its lithium ion battery.
This could be big for Segway, said Sharon Terlep in The Wall Street Journal. Its upright Personal Transporter was unveiled in 2001 with “considerable hype,” but few people bought it. GM’s big bet is that the “more car-like” Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility (PUMA) will do better, bolstering the bailed-out GM’s “increasingly uncertain future.”
GM could sure use some “cries of staged feel-good concept technology,” said Glenn Derene in Popular Mechanics. And PUMA, which has been in development for 18 months, could be a “real alternative to walking.” It would be a shame if one of GM’s “best ideas” turned out to be “nothing more than a last gasp.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“The possibilities are tantalizing,” said Frank Markus in Motor Trend, but the PUMA has some basic issues to work out—storage, safety, potholes—not to mention its more ambitious goals of wireless automated driving. Still, who knows? The 60 percent of us living in dense urban areas by 2030 won’t be driving today’s cars—if GM is around, we might be driving PUMAs.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
The state of Britain's Armed Forces
The Explainer Geopolitical unrest and the unreliability of the Trump administration have led to a frantic re-evaluation of the UK's military capabilities
By The Week UK
-
Anti-anxiety drug has a not-too-surprising effect on fish
Under the radar The fish act bolder and riskier
By Devika Rao, The Week US
-
Sudoku hard: April 21, 2025
The Week's daily hard sudoku puzzle
By The Week Staff