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CNET is reporting that Lexus has created a working Hoverboard.
The Japanese car maker released a short promotional video of what it's calling a "real, rideable hoverboard" to its YouTube channel on Tuesday, ever so briefly showing off the prototype to the world.
The clip begins with several seconds of a skateboarder riding along who then stops and slowly walks over to a Lexus-branded hoverboard that would make Marty McFly jealous. Of course, the clip ends right as the rider's about to step onto the hoverboard, so we don't actually see the craft in action, but it's a promising first step from an unexpected source.
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We'll learn more about the company's plans for the prototype on October 21, the day Marty McFly, Jennifer Parker and Doc Brown went back to the future in the second installment of the film. Maybe Lexus will have some drone dog-walkers to show off as well.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Friday June 26 2015, @03:38PM
There's these niggling problems of gravity, and power-to-weight density, and Newton's laws, and the like. If Lexus could actually make the device the teaser is teasing, there'd already have been multiple Nobel prizes awarded and they wouldn't be wasting such revolutionary breakthroughs on a toy.
What they have done is created an effective viral marketing campaign for whatever mildly-impressive new feature they're going to add to their next model. Indeed, I'll bet it won't be long before they release another video showing a fencer setting down her rapier and picking up a lightsaber, another one showing a kid getting off his bike and picking up a broomstick, that sort of thing...and then it turns out that what they're actually selling is a new luxury sedan that gets an "impossible" 41 MPG in some heavily-footnoted driving conditions.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 26 2015, @03:42PM
They've probably "invented" hydraulic/pneumatic/magnetic suspension that "so smooth it makes you think you're gliding over the road on a hoverboard"
... which I totally don't want in my car.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 26 2015, @04:35PM
Ever played air hockey?
Clue: the table supplies the lift air cushion, not the puck.
You have air cushions, or magnetic lift, and after that you pretty much run out of science.
You're nno going down the street on this thing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 26 2015, @04:43PM
By "suspension", I meant the squishy part between the car frame and the tires.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @05:20PM
The puck can generate the air as well. [airfloat.com]