The Lion, the ditch and Segway

The Lion, the ditch and the Segway

Rohit Gupta uses his Segway x2 to get around his 6 hectare (10 acre) lifestyle block in Dairy Flat, Auckland.

“Originally, I purchased the Segway x2 for my teenage kids to use, to ride around the property and just have fun. I decided a Segway Personal Transporter (PT) was much safer than a quad bike or a farm motorbike.”

“But I’ve been finding that I use it myself quite a lot. Much more than I expected, because it is so handy.”

Rohit says he likes how the Segway PT starts instantly with the push of a button – even on the coldest mornings. He’s also discovered that it speeds up doing some of those jobs that small block owners find so time consuming.

“For example, I put on the knapsack and go weed spraying. For spot spraying it is much faster than walking the paddocks. Also, when the knapsack becomes empty, it doesn’t take me anywhere near as long to glide back to the shed to refill. So the job gets done very much faster overall.”

As an electrical engineer, Rohit might well consider replacing that old knapsack with a manual pumping lever with twin spray tanks mounted on the cargo plates on either side of his Segway x2 complete with a battery operated pump. Now that would be a handy application of Kiwi ingenuity.

Rohit has been fascinated by the Segway PT since it was first announced in 2001. During the mid-2000’s he’d attended a technical talk about the Segway PT and a demonstration of the e167 model to the Auckland Institute of Electrical Engineers by Philip Bendall. That night he decided he’d own one for himself one day. Back then, Segway’s first cross-terrain model – the Segway XT – was yet to be released. Today, Rohit’s business Computer Fanatics Limited is a successful software company that specialises in applications for veterinarians (VETLINK), and farmers (Animal Health Plan, Equine Health Plan), as well as HAIRLINK (for Hair Salons, Beauty Clinics, Nail Bars, and Day Spas).

Rohit and his Segway x2, along with one of his two lions that guard his home

Segway PTs on Kiwi farms

POST UPDATED: 13 October 2014

The new Segway x2 SE getting down and dirty in the mud on a dairy farm in New Zealand

The Segway x2 SE can be found putting in a good day’s work down on the farm. Kiwi farmers and lifestyle block owners are using Segway x2 SE’s (and earlier Segway x2 and Segway XT models) to get everywhere from the house to the cowshed, or up from the paddock and down to the gate. Other landowners are using Segway PTs to do everything from lead the horses in to speeding up those never-ending-jobs like spot-spraying weeds. For example, Anne Watts uses her new Segway x2 SE on her 200 hectare (500 acre) dairy farm in Karaka, South Auckland. The Segway x2 SE transports her down muddy races, through puddles and across deep, lush paddocks of pasture – even when the soil underneath is wet and boggy after a week of rain.

Anne Watts with her Segway x2 SE on her dairy farm and equine property in Karaka, Auckland

The deeply treaded tyres and agile, cross-terrain capabilities of the Segway x2 SE enable Anne to glide to the four corners of her farm quickly, quietly and safely, whether it is to check on livestock or carry out maintenance. She is going to add Universal Cargo plates that have tie-downs for bungi cords, and the capability to attach or remove quick-release, watertight cargo cases. A Front Case lets her carry an assortment of gear including tools, equipment, wet weather clothing, and a water bottle.

The Segway x2 SE and a quad bike – two very useful vehicles for Kiwi farmers.

For Anne, the Segway x2 SE has become an important and often-used part of the transport mix of vehicles that help her work her farm on a daily basis. Of course, if she needs to carry some fence posts, a bale of hay and the cattle dog too, she’ll take the quad bike. But compared with climbing onto a quad bike that requires starting up, backing up and making multi-point turns just to turn around in narrow races and tracks, simply stepping onto the Segway x2 SE with it’s turn-on-the-spot, zero-radius turning is a faster and more convenient way to get around much of the time.

Segway x2 SE on a dressage arena that has wood chips on the surface

Anne’s other passion is horses, and she has begun to take the Segway x2 SE with her to horse shows around the country. She loads both horses and the Segway x2 SE into the back of her horse truck, and when she arrives the Segway x2 SE provides a quick, efficient way to get around large equine events. And because it is silent and zero-emission, the Segway x2 SE doesn’t scare the horses.

UPDATE 13 OCTOBER 2014: Anne says that since her Segway x2 SE was delivered at the start of June, there has hardly been a day that she hasn’t used it at least once. Some days it is only for a short jaunt from the house down to a paddock to check the horses or feed some lambs, but most days she is off and on it many times as she works all around the farm.