Many companies have made us excited about the prospect of real-life hoverboards in recent years, and Lexus is jumping on board (pun intended) with a flying skateboard of its own.
The car marker teased its hoverboard in a new video as part of its ‘Amazing in Motion’ series Monday. We see a wheeled skateboarder approaching the Lexus hoverboard, but the 37 second clip ends as he places a foot on the board.
Lexus has not divulged much information about its hoverboard, but did tell Gizmodo that the apparatus uses “liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductors and permanent magnets.” This is why we see a foggy mist emitting from the board in the teaser clip. The Lexus hoverboard project has been in development for only 18 months and is being tested by a professional skateboarder in Barcelona, Spain.
It was the 1989 movie “Back To The Future 2” that gave us a glimpse of what it would be like to surf on air instead of having to tediously kick and push. Since then, many companies tried to make hoverboards a reality. In 2014, the California company Arx Pax hosted a Kickstarter to raise funds to build its Hendo hoverboard. There have also been several hoverboard hoaxes, including one starring professional skateboarder Tony Hawk.
Typically, the technology for hoverboards requires extremely strong magnets in the hoverboard and on the surface so the hoverboard can levitate. Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says hoverboards like the ones in “Back To The Future 2,” which can levitate from any surface are not possible. "There are people working on it, and there are working versions of it, but hoverboards that cover everywhere? Where you would have taken a skateboard? I think that’s unrealistic, and it requires a special under surface to support it," Tyson told the Huffington Post in early June.
However, Tyson notes that hoverboard development could come in the form of special hoverboard skate parks for example, which have floors equipped for levitation.
Perhaps this is exactly what Lexus is planning. In the clip, the Lexus hoverboard appears to be hovering on concrete and the location looks like a skate park.
The clip also features a quote from Lexus’ chief engineer Haruhiko Tanahashi. “There is no such thing as impossible, it’s just a matter of figuring out how,” he said.
We’ll just have to wait and see if Lexus has anything planned for October 21, 2015 (the date Marty McFly travels back to the future in the sequel film).
