The Lexus Hoverboard has received its official debut, and while the trailer revealing it being put to the test on a skate park is undoubtedly impressive, if you chip just a little bit beneath the surface you’ll discover that you likely won’t get to be Marty McFly in the near future after all.
In short, the Lexus Hoverboard is faced with exactly the same limitations as its peers, the only difference being that it’s got the financial backing of Lexus behind it to give the illusion that this isn’t the case. The skate park shown in the trailer is actually custom-built, with it being made of wood that’s been painted to look like concrete. Beneath this wood are magnets, which is what the Lexus Hoverboard uses to, er, hover.
Also, as outlined by The Verge, the Hoverboard requires charging every 20 minutes, which is pretty impractical even for what essentially amounts to a skateboard that dangerously levitates above the ground.
Watch the debut trailer below:
Every time I become excited and then promptly disappointed by a hoverboard I feel like I’m reenacting that scene from The Godfather III: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” I bellow, before resigning in the knowledge that I’ll probably only be able to get my hands on a real, honest-to-goodness hoverboard when I’m far too old to stand on one without pulling my back out of shape.
The Lexus Hoverboard appears to be yet another tantalizing teaser of a future that doesn’t actually exist yet, though it has served its intended purpose of drawing more attention to Lexus, even if they basically had to go out and build an entire skate park in Spain in order for us to pay any attention to them.
