Is the EUCs market nearly matured?

[LanghamP]

I don't mean the people's ages, I mean the market. If you look in the past and present for markets that aren't EUCs, for example airliners (was mature then becomes "emerging" nearly every time a new engine comes out), computers/cell phones, cameras, etc...the mature market looks the same regardless.

--Everyone can buy and ride an EUCs with ease, with no special technical know-how.

--The prices between various wheels is close and, I think, fairly stable.

Although I don't see other EUCs riders in my neck of the woods, I wonder if we're approaching the close of the "golden age" of EUCs in the sense we used to have:

--A large and diverse (but accident prone!) number of EUCs manufacturers. Now it seems we have just Kingsong, Gotway, and perhaps Solowheel/Inmotion. Dunno about Ninebot but they are popular on Amazon.

--A large number of US dealers. I'm guessing that all went away, and now we probably just have one USA dealer that has more sales than the rest combined and just competes with direct from China. I don't see this is a monopoly, though, as I don't think there's high barriers of entry, and anyway high profits would just encourage others to enter the market. Still, lack of consumer choice is always bad in the sense the consumer pays more for less. Ideally we'd see EUCs dealers on every street corner hawking their 50 buck 3000 Watt wheels. Since we can resell our wheels on the secondary market, we can drive the new wheel prices down, ya know, to keep them dealers honest.

Anyway, not sure I know where I'm going with this. I figured I'd throw out a few thoughts, and see what others think who EUCs will sell to in the next few years, how much you think they'll cost, and what emerging technologies we'll see in them.

[caelus]

You think, we 're already in the "majority"?

Source

[LanghamP]

13 minutes ago, caelus said:

You think, we 're already in the "majority"?

Source

That's an innovation adoption chart not a market maturation chart, the difference being one measures market share caused by technological disruption while the other looks at technological refinement and prices. Think railroad versus airplane, or sliderule versus calculator. We have plenty of technologies that are heavily market mature which never became popular. Like my Bowflex dumbbells are pretty well understood, cheap, yet few people have them. All the people that are going to buy them have already bought them. 

[caelus]

I think, electric unicycles have a tremendous potential. As they are extremely simple, compact, and cheap. And the level of control and agility is unparalleled. My guess it that EUC and other PLEV will outrun bicycles in market sales. But that will need a full generation to happen.

[kasenutty]

Another feature I find nice, caelus, is that you can go as fast as you want forever and never ever crash no matter what. 

[LanghamP]

Ok, came back from lunch and realized where I'm going with this.

What would the world look like with widespread EUC adoption? What would they look like? What would they cost? How would our roads look like? Would we be any healthier? How easy would it be to pick up chicks on an EUC? (Certainly one could talk to them a bit easier than from a car).

 

[caelus]

My speculations:

EUC and PLEV will become much cheaper. So in 20 years basically everybody will have one. At least.
That's mainly because batteries (and all other electronic components) are getting cheaper and cheaper (25% per year):

[Catlord17]

I'd bet the biggest barriers to maturation are:

1. Price.  Right now, the lower end of decent is almost $500.  Most people see that and it's over, I'd bet.

2. "I could never balance on that thing, I'd fall off and kill myself."  I have heard that or something close to it every single time I demo the EUC to someone and suggest they get one.  The fear of falling because it's a one wheeled device, and the perception that to ride it I must have circus-performer levels of balance and they could never achieve that in 20 lifetimes.  Even when I tell them that it only took me a total of maybe 15 days practicing at 20 minutes a day, or about 5 hours of learning it.

I'm pretty sure that IF EUCs become mainstream, it will only be because of the "I can do anything" attitude of the currently younger generations making it mainstream.

[ir_fuel]

It's "our responsibility" somehow, as owners.

 

Let's put it like this. Imagine you have been walking all your life (from 1 year until now) and let's say you are 50 years old, and all of the sudden some dude comes along with this cool thing he got that allows him to go a lot faster than walking. It's called a BICYCLE! Don't you want to try? What would happen? Lots of people would give up because it's too hard and they will fall with only 2 wheels.

Why isn't this the case? Because everyone learns when they are a child how to ride a bike. It's become part of the education we give our kids. If all kids learned to ride EUC', what would happen then you think? Maybe they won't touch one for 20 years, but if the time/budget/place is right, they can get one and hop back on without hesitation.

It's the only reason that electric scooters are a lot more popular, since everyone can ride them. Electric skateboards is a similar, although much smaller, story. Lots of kids learn to skate.

[Stan Onymous]

I would say that the technology and battery capacity and size are nowhere near where they will be in a few years, and that will probably be a better time to ask if the market is mature, but I believe my answer will still be no, we havent seen nothing yet. Right now, EUCs suffer from the same thing as eBikes which have been around for nearly 20 years. Its a motor and battery that wont double the weight of the bike. For EUCs its portability weight, reliability, and speed all depend on the motor and battery weights.

For both ebikes and eucs the 40lbs for 40 miles weight barrier needs to be almost halved in order for either industry to be mature as far as having a willing user base who will want to lug it around. I am not sure that the market will ever come down unless true hover capabilities become available. We are still in a great time to be a rider since we still seem to be in a test market phase with lots of different makers offering all sorts of different riding machines. More and more people are seeing that these, unlike hoverboards, are as useful as bikes and easier and maybe safer to use and carry around than bikes.

[ir_fuel]

I think the ebike market is quite mature. ebike sales are through the roof. In some segments they even outsell normal bikes, and people spend a lot more money per bike on an ebike than on a normal bike.