Back to the Future hoverboards are finally becoming mainstream thanks to a Chinese company
Ninebot is the company that bought Segway and took them to the mainstream. The company is now selling self-balancing scooters, unicycles, hover skates, and even robots. It is also one of the main suppliers behind the US scooter craze.
Segway used to be hailed as the future of transportation. That was until they started to be associated with airport police and overweight tourists and became a bit of a joke. The bad PR continued when one of the company’s owners died… after riding his Segway off a cliff.
Hoverboards had the same boom-bust cycle too, becoming a viral hardware hit… and then a menace, after a string of complaints of broken bones, chipped teeth, and exploding batteries. (There’s a reason every airline asks you not to carry those batteries on board planes.)
These days, however, Beijing-based Ninebot, which bought Segway in 2015, is trying to change the bad reputation of so-called personal transporters. And it seems to be doing a pretty good job – people riding self-balancing scooters can now be seen all over China.
The trend has grown so much that online commentators started claiming we are entering the process of “cabbagification” -- tech products that were once expensive and advanced have become as widespread as, uh, cabbage. The term became popular after a video of a farmer driving a Ninebot self-balancing scooter through rural China became viral in the country at the beginning of 2018.
Ninebot's success at home came after it started selling its Ninebot Mini self-balancing scooter with smartphone maker Xiaomi, which owns a stake in the company.