If you grew up watching Back To The Future flicks, you’ve probably fantasized about how cool it would be if, like Marty McFly, you could own one of those cool hoverboards.
Recently, Lexus has unveiled a new video where they showed a real, floating hoverboard similar to that one from the popular movie. The hoverboard was brought to a skate park in Spain and professional skateboarders were asked to try it out. As you can imagine, everyone had a blast testing it.
Check out the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwSwZ2Y0Ops
Gliding on the hoverboard looked a bit tricky though since many of the guys stumbled too often while performing even the most basic of tricks. Besides, this is a tech powered by magnets and superconductors. You will notice liquid nitrogen spilling from the board.
Another potential hiccup for this invention is that it only runs on a special (i.e. expensive) wooden skatepark with embedded magnetic layer. Also, you will need to fill it up with liquid nitrogen at least every 10 to 20 minutes to keep it afloat.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the Lexus hoverboard is that it’s just built for the sole purpose of marketing their vehicles. So don’t expect any of these to hit the market soon.
In fact, it wasn’t even the car company that created the board in the first place but a team of scientists from Hamburg, Germany. The prototype was used for the Lexus car commercial.
As Sam Sheffer effectively summed up on an interview with The Verge:
“Lexus won’t sell you one of these things. What we got is movie magic – well, ad magic, in this case.”
Disappointments aside, it’s pretty awesome that such a technology now exists. We do hope they’ll continue developing it and maybe make it available for the public in the years to come.
