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Why walk? Ride this portable personal transporter instead

Technically Incorrect: Why would humans ever want to walk when they can have a laptop-size platform to roll along sidewalks? Welcome to the amazing shrunken Segway.

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There's something quite beautiful about this. Cocoa Motors/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


Here's something I find bonkers.

People slide their Lexuses into a mall parking lot and desperately drive around until they can find a spot as close as possible to the mall.

Sometimes, it takes them 10 or 15 minutes to find that spot. But, Lord help them, they're going to work at it until their legs have to use the minimum effort to get to Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Essentially, Americans have decided to rebel against Nancy Sinatra and insist these boots just weren't made for walking.

All hail, then, the WalkCar. This joyous machine is like a Segway that's been forced onto a diet of kale and brambles. Or perhaps it's like a skateboard developed by a sawn-off shotgun manufacturer.

Its designer is, Reuters tells me, Kuniako Saito.

Saito has a curiously Applesque attitude toward design. He told Reuters: "It seems to me that the US is always the one which invents new products and Japan is the one which takes those products and improves on them to make a better version of it."

I'll leave that percolating around your being, while I tell you that Saito believes his new lithium battery-powered transporter is a totally new idea, developed by him and his team at Cocoa Motors.

Of course, the true beauty of his concept is that you can carry your WalkCar around quite easily. It looks a little like a MacBook on wheels. Its aluminum structure means it weighs between 4.4 and 6.6 pounds. (There are outdoor and indoor versions.)

He says it can withstand 265 pounds of human. It will, therefore, have a limited market in the US.

However, it does offer a simple beauty. You get on it and it starts automatically. You want to turn and it responds to shifts in your body. Saito says that it can go 7.4 miles on a full charge and is maximum speed is 6.2 mph. (Charging it takes three hours.)

Even more astonishing is that he's preparing to market these things. They'll cost less than an actual MacBook. The retail price is said to be a mere $800.

So remember all those rumors about Apple getting into the car business? Well, perhaps they could start with the dual-purpose Saito MacBook.

That would surely excite Wall Street.