GM & Segway Partner on PUMA Urban Vehicle

Allright, this is sweet… especially to a guy who loves Segways (that’s me). GM and Segway are working together on a two seater mini-car that they hope will decongest big cities (some pictures). They’re calling it PUMA for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility. For one, it’s really cool. It has two wheels (plus four more little training wheels on the prototype) like a Segway but has seats like a car. In fact, two little seats. Secondly, it will use energy as efficiently as a car that gets 200 miles per gallon. Fantastic. They make a few good points about the demand for this vehicle probably coming from outside of the US where bicycles are currently a primary method of transportation.

Although I do understand that an electric vehicle is clean energy and if it replaced normal vehicles it would remove some congestion from big cities where cars are the primary mode of transportation, I don’t get how this would really benefit cities where everyone bikes. You can fit more bikers in an area than PUMAers and biking is clearly a very clean energy. So, at the moment it seems that the target market of their product wouldn’t receive the primary benefit of this vehicle. Regardless, it’s a Segway so I think it’s totally cool. I drive two miles to and from work each day so a super lightweight vehicle that I could plug in at night that had 35 miles of range during the day would be more than I need. Thank goodness I can take back roads (two lane roads) to work. This thing would become a pancake in an instant on I-40.

Facebook Co-Founder Speaking at CED Venture Conference in Three Weeks

Chris Hughes, Facebook co-founder and Obama insider is speaking at CED’s Venture Conference in April in Pinehurst. The recent announcement of Chris’ addition to the lineup makes this conference a whole lot more interesting. I’ve blocked off the dates on my calendar and will be attending now. His short bio is on the CED Venture website now. I also learned a lot more about him (his Obama campaign involvement, etc) through a quick Google search . There’s a good article on FastCompany about him as well.

The last time I attended the Venture conference with CED was a few years back when it was in Pinehurst as well. This was one of the best entrepreneurial networking events I’ve ever attended as the large porches outside of the Inn where the conference is held become crowds of investors and entrepreneurs milling around with drinks and cigars in hand in the late evening. A very neat opportunity to meet folks from all around the country. Drop me a note if you’ll be at Venture and we’ll catch up.

Pre-registration for Venture 2009 closes on 4/16 and you can register online.