Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Don't buy into the Hoverboard hype just yet.


Imagine a vehicle with all the freedom of a car, and all the efficiency of a high speed train.  Now share this video and give us money.

You might have seen the Hendo kickstarter floating around recently.  Before you reach for your wallet, you might want to read up on what the thing actually is, which is not at all what they're selling it as.

Two key bullet points:

  • It only works over a specially prepared surface.
  • It only works for about seven minutes before it needs recharging.

Despite bold claims on the KS page that "one day we expect to have hoverboards that can effortlessly float over any medium," there is no actual plan to accomplish this; the technology is entirely dependent on inducing an electrical current in a supporting surface, which means it's never going to work over asphalt, dirt, or water.  Never ever.

Here's a video of a science project that uses the same principle to make a thing hover if you want to play with a thing that hovers but don't want to shell out a few hundred bucks for it.

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