Inventor Reveals Ginger To Be Moto-Scooter "Human Transporter' Debuts Commercial transportation is first target, but it'll be another year for consumers.(INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY)

Byline: BRIAN DEAGON

After a year of guessing, Ginger is just what many expected -- an electric scooter.

It doesn't fly or levitate, as some hoped. It doesn't use hydrogen fuel. You plug it in to juice up the batteries. It has two big wheels and a little handlebar. There is no seat.

But don't call it a scooter, says the creator. It's the Segway Human Transporter, developed at a cost of $100 million by inventor Dean Kamen.

Few products in the last decade have seen as much press hype as this. A Web subculture developed to follow the mystery, which began after it was learned that Harvard Business School Press paid $250,000 for a book about Ginger without really knowing what it was. Ginger even had humorous Web sites, including one that diagrams it as a motorized toilet scooter.

But it's no joke to Kamen, whose inventions include a wheelchair that climbs stairs and a portable kidney dialysis machine. He says Segway will replace cars in cramped cities, leading to redesigned cityscapes.

Segway, in its simplest form, is indeed a motorized scooter, but unlike one ever seen before. Technology and gyroscopes inside the base platform make the scooter highly stable and self-balancing. There is no brake handle, no engine, throttle or gearshift. Users lean forward to go forward, and backward for reverse. The inventor says it can traverse ice, snow or even large rocks with ease. It has a top-end speed of 17 mph -- three times faster than most humans walk -- and will travel 11 to 17 miles on a charge, depending on driving conditions.