The Segway, that futuristic-looking scooter that was billed as a revolutionary way to get around but quickly became a pop-culture punch line, has found another new owner.
Bedford, N.H.-based Segway Inc. has been purchased by Ninebot, a China-based competitor that makes similar personal transportation devices, the two privately held companies said Wednesday.
The companies didn’t reveal details of the acquisition, but Ninebot simultaneously announced it had raised $80 million in a new investment round from financial backers, which include smartphone maker Xiaomi and US venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
The deal represents a quick turnaround in their corporate relations: In September, Segway petitioned federal trade regulators to block Ninebot and several other companies from selling similar devices in the United States, saying they were violating its patents.
It is the third time Segway has changed hands since 1999, when inventor Dean Kamen began trying to commercialize his idea for a motorized, self-balancing, two-wheeled device that could help people get around in cities.
The first Segways went on sale on Amazon.com in 2002, but after development costs of more than $100 million the devices never caught on with a mass market despite heavy publicity. Kamen had predicted consumers would buy 50,000 Segways in the first year, but the company said it didn’t reach that milestone until 2009. As a private company, Segway doesn’t regularly report sales, and it’s unclear how many Segways are in use today.
The roughly $5,000 price tag was certainly a barrier, but Segway also fought with state and local regulators over where they would allow machines that were not quite a motorbike but more substantial than a bicycle. The company said Segways weren’t meant for traveling in the streets, but some officials and pedestrians also objected to the Segways zipping around on sidewalks.
“Something that looks like a broomstick handle stuck to a chain saw with wheels — it’s kind of ridiculous to consider it a motor vehicle,” the head of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles at the time, Dan Grabauskas, told the Globe in 2002.
Then there were the jokes, helped along by some unfortunate crashes and safety problems.
President George W. Bush infamously fell off a Segway in 2003 at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, after failing to turn on the power. That same year, the company recalled 6,000 over safety worries. And in 2006, the company recalled all 23,500 Segways because of a software bug that caused their wheels to abruptly reverse direction.
Then there was the sad fate of James W. Heselden, a British millionaire who bought Segway in 2009 and died less than a year later when he fell off a cliff while riding one near his home.
The Segway also made more lighthearted appearances in the entertainment world, featured as a mechanical foil of hard-luck Gob Bluth, played by Will Arnett in the TV series “Arrested Development,” and as a trusty sidekick to comedian Kevin James in “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.”
Segway moved past a strictly consumer market over the years and produced models for industrial and police uses, including three-wheeled versions.
But that market expansion apparently wasn’t enough to sustain Segway as a standalone company, and competitors offering cheaper, smaller models have entered the fray in recent years.
Paolo Santi, a researcher who studies urban mobility at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, said the Segway and similar vehicles could still have a future as a part of broader transit systems, similar to bike-sharing programs.
“If these kind of solutions can in some way be integrated with other transportation modes, that could be a way of actually scaling up what is currently a niche market into a mass market,” he said.
In its announcement, Ninebot said Segway would continue to operate under its brand name as a wholly owned subsidiary.
“Our combination with Ninebot will enable us to provide more intelligent and valuable products to our customers. We are confident in our future,” Segway president Rod Keller said in a prepared statement.
Curt Woodward can be reached at curt.woodward@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @curtwoodward.