Skip to main content

Ditch your idiotic self-balancing scooter for a hoverboard that actually hovers

It doesn’t take an extensive, Socratic debate to get the bottom of this quandary: If it has two wheels and doesn’t actually hover, is it a hoverboard? The answer is no — it’s simply a self-balancing electric scooter, one that’s nowhere near as cool as the device Marty McFly first tantalized us with nearly two decades ago. After all of the brouhaha and build up of the Great Hovebroard Sham of 2015 (as history will surely remember it), humanity was left with a bevy of ACL injuries, fires, tragic Vine compilations, and little else. As a species, we’ve sent probes into space and detected the Higgs boson, yet the personal hoverboard has somehow eluded us… until now.

Below are five hoverboards that, well, actually hover above the ground. Just don’t expect to get your hands on any of them in the near future — crowdfunding a $10,000 venture on Kickstarter isn’t exactly easy, after all.

ArcaBoard

Aesthetically speaking, the ArcaBoard certainly isn’t very impressive. The device is nearly indistinguishable from other run-of-the-mill boxes, yet, as the saying goes, “looks can be deceiving.” The ArcaBoard team spent thousands of hours creating and prototyping different structures, only to settle on a simple design that excels in terms of durability, stability, and security. That design — the shape of cutting-edge aerodynamics and avionics — is a rectangular prism. The ArcaBoard uses a total of 36 high-power, electric fans to hover above the earth, each of which is built directly into the frame. Last year, the ArcaBoard team launched a Kickstarter to fund the project, offering backers their very own ArcaBoards for a cool $10,000. Not surprisingly, the campaign was soon cancelled, after receiving a mere $1,148 of its $250,000 goal.

Nonetheless, Arcaboard is still allegedly selling the hoverboard on its website for $14,900. According to the company’s CEO, ArcaBoard was created “so that you could achieve your dreams, dreams you never thought possible.” Well, if your dream is to utilize a series of fans to crudely achieve rudimentary flight without the ability to steer, then your dreams are within reach, my friend. Some even laughed at the first automobiles. Hold your jeers, ladies and gentlemen, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.

Read more here

Omni Hoverboard

Canadian inventor Catalin Alexandre Duru previously set the world record for the farthest hoverboard flight, and he did so using the Omni Hoverboard. He’s since been dethroned by the folks at Zapata Racing, and while the age-old saying “if you’re not first, you’re last” may hold true for many aspects of one’s life, the silver medal is still pretty solid when it comes to cutting-edge personal avionics. This wasn’t some short Kitty Hawk voyage either, Duru and his Omni Hoverboard traveled more than 905 feet, more than quintupling the previous record. The Omni Hoverboard is one of the few functional hoverboards that uses actual propeller-based technology, too. Imagine being strapped into a personal drone with the controls at your fingertips… and your neighbors thought you were annoying when you got your hands on that DJI Phantom 4!

Read more here

Lexus Slide

Lexus unveiled the Slide in June of 2015, as part of the company’s “Amazing in Motion” marketing campaign. The board uses magnetic levitation — the same technology incorporated into many high-speed trains — to successfully hover. The internal superconductors embedded in the board are cooled with liquid nitrogen to -197 degrees Fahrenheit, which creates a magnetic field between the superconductors and a network of ground-mounted magnets.

The demo video was all filmed in a specially designed “hoverpark” in Barcelona, Spain. Lexus installed more than 65o feet of magnetic track in the park to allow the hoverboard to pull of its gravity-defying stunt. In the words of Doc Brown: “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.” With the Lexus Slide, you may not need “roads” per se; however, you may need an absurdly expensive hoverpark designed conspicuously by a luxury car company for the promotional purposes of a hoverboard they do not plan to put on the market.

Read more here

Hendo Hover

The Hendo Hover is powered via four downward-facing electromagnets. These engines create a magnetic field which essentially pushes against itself to levitate. There is, however, a pretty big caveat. The Hendo Hover can only function (hover) when situated above a non-ferromagnetic conductor surface or — in layman’s terms — a metal sheet that doesn’t contain iron or steel. Meaning, yes, you can hover, albeit in a very, specific setting. In December of 2014, the Hendo Hover successfully raised $510,591 with 3,169 backers via its Kickstarter page. The first hoverboards shipped to backers in August of 2015, and since then, the company has been tinkering with the directional thrust capacity of its hover engines. This would allow riders to steer their Hendo boards instead of just floating around frictionlessly without any kind of control.

Read more here

Flyboard Air

The Flyboard Air is the second iteration of the Flyboard, a predecessor to Frank Zapata’s original model. Although the original Flyboard propulsion system utilized streams of high pressure water siphoned from a body of water directly below the rider, the latest model ditches the system and the bulky hose in favor a more versatile, air-based propulsion system. With the original Flyboard, riders needed to be cognizant of how high they were “hovering” at any given time in order to ensure the hose was submerged deep enough to produce a continuous supply of water, thus limiting riders to a max height of 30 feet. Now, without the hose, riders are able to soar as high as 10,000 feet.

The Flyboard Air recently set a new Guinness World Record for “farthest hoverboard flight,” covering a distance of more than 7,388 feet and shattering the previous record of 905 feet. Zapata Racing, Frank Zapata’s company, claims that the Flyboard Air is designed to reach a max speed of 90 miles per hour, with enough power for 10 minutes of flight time. This model is still in the preliminary stages of testing, though, we look forward to seeing the forthcoming tweaks.

Read more here

Dallon Adams
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Dallon Adams is a graduate of the University of Louisville and currently lives in Portland, OR. In his free time, Dallon…
Meet the game-changing pitching robot that can perfectly mimic any human throw
baseball hitter swings and misses

Who’s your favorite baseball pitcher? Shane McClanahan? Sandy Alcantara? Justin Verlander? Whoever you said, two of the top sports-tech companies in the U.S. -- Rapsodo and Trajekt Sports -- have teamed up to build a robot version of them, and the results are reportedly uncannily accurate.

Okay, so we’re not talking about walking-talking-pitching standalone robots, as great a sci-fi-tinged MLB ad as that would be. However, Rapsodo and Trajekt have combined their considerable powers to throw a slew of different technologies at the problem of building a machine that's able to accurately simulate the pitching style of whichever player you want to practice batting against -- and they may just have pulled it off, too.

Read more
The best portable power stations
EcoFlow DELTA 2 on table at campsite for quick charging.

Affordable and efficient portable power is a necessity these days, keeping our electronic devices operational while on the go. But there are literally dozens of options to choose from, making it abundantly difficult to decide which mobile charging solution is best for you. We've sorted through countless portable power options and came up with six of the best portable power stations to keep your smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other gadgets functioning while living off the grid.
The best overall: Jackery Explorer 1000

Jackery has been a mainstay in the portable power market for several years, and today, the company continues to set the standard. With three AC outlets, two USB-A, and two USB-C plugs, you'll have plenty of options for keeping your gadgets charged.

Read more
CES 2023: HD Hyundai’s Avikus is an A.I. for autonomous boat and marine navigation
Demonstration of NeuBoat level 2 autonomous navigation system at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show

This content was produced in partnership with HD Hyundai.
Autonomous vehicle navigation technology is certainly nothing new and has been in the works for the better part of a decade at this point. But one of the most common forms we see and hear about is the type used to control steering in road-based vehicles. That's not the only place where technology can make a huge difference. Autonomous driving systems can offer incredible benefits to boats and marine vehicles, too, which is precisely why HD Hyundai has unveiled its Avikus AI technology -- for marine and watercraft vehicles.

More recently, HD Hyundai participated in the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, to demo its NeuBoat level 2 autonomous navigation system for recreational boats. The name mashes together the words "neuron" and "boat" and is quite fitting since the Avikus' A.I. navigation tech is a core component of the solution, it will handle self-recognition, real-time decisions, and controls when on the water. Of course, there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes with HD Hyundai's autonomous navigation solution, which we'll dive into below -- HD Hyundai will also be introducing more about the tech at CES 2023.

Read more