Well it’s here. The hoverboard park of the future, as well as details about the board and the park. It’s both amazing and quite a letdown at the same time. What you can do with this Lexus built hoverboard is pretty amazing. In some ways it’s the promise of Back to the Future delivered… with one huge exception: You are limited to riding on a predefined track. In spite of all the talk of innovation and and achieving the impossible, it’s basically a maglev train that you push with your foot, with a few oversized Hot Wheels style jumps thrown in. Is it anything new? Not really. Is it freaking cool? Yes. Lexus spent over a year and who knows how much money developing this concept. Is it better than the Hendo hoverboard? That’s a tough call. The Lexus version is more fully realized, from a demonstration point of view, and the nature of the fixed track means you aren’t going to slide out constantly like a snowboard on ice with no rails. In that respect, the Lexus version is more like a skateboard, however the Hendo’s ability to pick an infinite number of paths (as long as it’s on a special surface) definitely appeals to skateboarding. It doesn’t require power, except that to make liquid nitrogen to keep the thing floating. In addition to flat ground riding, there’s also transition and attempted rail slides. The park has been painted to simulate concrete, but most of the transition elements built for the hoverboard appear to have a wood covering. I swear this is real, if not, it’s the most elaborate and well done viral hoax I’ve ever seen. Loads of video and pictures after the jump.
– Thanks to Concretins Nick for the tip.
UPDATE: Checking back a mere 5 years later and the original videos have all disappeared, as if it never happened. Rest assured, it did happen! Good thing I made the screen caps.
Fortunately, there are still a few 3rd party videos online. This one from the verge makes me think the narrator has a very punchable face. I think it’s requirement of all tech video channels that have to sound like a bored and slightly annoyed know-it-all.
I’d much rather listen to this guy.
Lexus Asia Still has some vid:
Considering the amount of money and effort they put into it, you’d have to imagine that Lexus would leave their hoverboard mini-site up until the end of the Interwebs, but huge corporations are fickle. If you’re visiting this web page from the future (see what I did there?) here are some archived photos from the Lexus site, from a time of excess that we’ve since learned the error of our ways, oh masters from a superior planetary system.
Ross McGouran is the lucky guy who got to test this out.
2 comments
dstrytruitt
Why Lexus??
wes
cure cancer