![]() It keeps the board in place using “ quantum locking” – a property of type 2 superconductors that overcomes the tendency of magnets to wobble off and repel each other, using a sort of magnetic, sticky “vortex”. Photograph: Lexusīut what if this tech were extended to an entire skatepark, as carmaker Lexus has done with its Slide hoverboard? Perhaps the closest example yet to Marty’s machine, this gadget houses a liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductor to float above a hidden magnetic track. Lexus Slide hoverboard being tested at a purpose-built skatepark in Barcelona, Spain. And unfortunately the battery lasts just a few minutes. But on closer inspection, it screeches like a defective train and is so hard to control even professional skateboarder Tony Hawk spins like a top until he is flung off. Watching the demo, it feels ostensibly close to that skateboard ideal – it looks a riot to ride, with whooping trialists gleefully floating about 15cm above the floor. Naturally, it also requires a magnetic surface.įirst up, California-based company Arx Pax’s Hendo hoverboard. If our hoverboard uses maglev – and we have a few examples of those – it inconveniently requires superconductors, cooled with liquid nitrogen to around -135C. Looks fun but it doesn’t hover, isn’t a board, and people just don’t want to be seen on a giant lawnmower. ![]() One alarming effort by Airboard originally claimed to be a genuine hoverboard but turned out to be a personal hovercraft, looking more like an industrial floor scrubber you can ride.Įssentially a floaty scooter, its noisy internal combustion engine allows it to bob about menacingly on a cushion of air, with a drive wheel on the ground to steer it. If it sits on a cushion of air, it is probably a hovercraft, which have been around since the 1960s.
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