When you travel quite a lot in your live, you know that airports around the world can be a pain to navigate. It is not really enjoyable to walk for 40 minutes to get to your gate. Of course, a numerous airports have the moving walk helps, which are convenient but not the ideal solution. It was about time that someone would take the problem seriously and would try to be innovative. How about a drivable suitcase? Would it tickle your fancy? Now, there is one, and it is called the Modobag!
The Modobag is quite some sophisticated engineering. The suitcase is capable to drive 8 mph (13 km/h) with a radius of 5 miles (8.5 kilometers). A truly brilliant technology. All the parts to make the suitcase moving take only 15% of the inside of the suitcase. This was a priority during the development as the suitcase still needed to be usable with this feature. When you watch the video (see link at the end of the article), you see why this suitcase is an instant success. You can hardly miss you flights in the future when driving around on the Modobag.
As shown in the video, a smile says more than a thousand words. Currently, the project is still in kickstarter mode. You can find more information on their IndieGoGo page. The early bird price for a Modobag is only 995 US dollars. After the launch, the price will rise to 1,199.- US dollars. A good price to have some fun on the airport right? It is always allowed to let your younger self out.
Do you think this is a suitcase you would buy? What do you think that are the pros and cons? What do you think about the weight of 8.6 kg? Do you think it is fast enough? Feel free to submit a comment!
Sources:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/modobag-world-s-first-motorized-rideable-luggage-travel-technology#/
Dear Marcus, thank you for your blog! As I do not travel that often and I do not travel that much to large airports, I do not think I would buy this suitcase because of its price and weight. However, for frequent travellers, this could be an ideal suitcase! Frequent travellers are often allowed to take more luggage, travel to large airports and who do not use low-fair airlines (where you have a maximum number of kilo’s). What I wonder, is how much kilo the suitcase can handle (i.e. what can be the maximum weight of the person sitting on it)? In any case, I think the idea is great, and I am curious to see whether the majority of us will be going from gate to gate on our suitcase soon 🙂
Hi Marcus, thanks for sharing this blog post.
I totally feel the pain of dragging one or in some cases, multiple carry-on suitcases around the airport. It is not uncommon for me to arrive at the boarding gate drenched in sweat due to running late. The idea of a motorized luggage sounds amazing, Modobag’s marketing campaign certainly got me excited with “get you to your destination up to 3x faster”. But the cost, weight, and safety concern can prevent what you mentioned in your post: “an instant success”.
Modobag’s price point doesn’t appeal to an average consumer, especially not college students. In 2014, median family income for all families was $66,632, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2015-2016 school year was $9,410 for state residents at public colleges. A $1,000 Modobag would be out of reach, or unnecessary for students. After checking out Modobag’s Indiegogo page, the video of a female student getting across a campus while riding Modobag seems quite amusing to me. I mean, more and more universities and students are abandoning heavy hard-cover paper textbooks and transitioning to digital materials. I don’t think Modobag will be successful in trying to sell its products to this group of customers.
Moving on to the next problem: Modobag is heavy. Most airlines have a standard 25-pound carry-on limit, so people are left with 6-pound wiggle room for their belonging, that’s…very little. Most likely they will exceed the limit and need to pay extra fee. I’m not that thrill about this.
Lastly, safety issue. Can you imagine if Modobag becomes a huge success and airports become a playground for bumper car ride? I don’t see that happening any time soon, but it should be considered if the company wants to scale its products in the future.
Resources:
https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/family-income-selected-characteristics-2014
Hi Marcus! I had never heard of the Modobag or anything similar, so I enjoyed reading your blogpost. I think it will take quite some time for this suitcase to conquer the market. The price of 1200 dollars is quite expensive for a luxurious accessory like this. You will only use this suitcase on the airport, so this product is targeted at people who travel a lot. An example of people in this market segment, are people who travel often for their work. These people (or most of the time their company) are already spending a lot of extra dollars to fly in a business class seat. So the price of the Modobag might be less important to this target audience. However, in my opinion it is still a bit odd to see a professional looking men or women driving around on top of a motorized box. This concept might be a little too youthful for these people. As for myself, I would never buy anything like this because I actually enjoy walking around the airport. I am curious about how this technology will further develop.
Hi Marcus,
Thank you for this highly interesting blog post. It’s quite something different than the posts about Netflix or any other online platform.
A lot of my thoughts have already been discussed by the people here on the forum. However, one thing is still undiscussed: that it just doesn’t look cool enough to catch enough attention. In my opinion, for a product to be able to get a market share, it needs to create a buzz. For this buzz it needs to be cool and everyone needs to have it.
On the other hand, you can say that they’re focussing on a niche market: frequent travellers with money to spend. I’m in doubt whether this product is something a professional would buy. This is just because it’s uncommon to arrive at your meeting on you suitcase.
I think the alternative to the Modobag is much more plausible: smaller scooters or other vehicles that are suitable to carry as hand luggage.
I would like to hear what you think of the ‘coolness’ effect of the Modobag.