Great Scott! Lexus Unveils Working Hoverboard
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Ulrich Baumgarten via Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus has unveiled its latest sled — a hoverboard. The automaker recently hired pro skateboarder Ross McGouran to try it out for a slick promotional video, and while it doesn’t work as well as the Mattel version Marty McFly rocked in Back to the Future 2, Slide does work as advertised.
Slide works using superconducting magnetic levitation, like a miniature bullet train — but unlike McFly’s borrowed board, or those Pitbull hoverboards that pursued him in the movie — Slide only works in a specific place: a specially designed skate park in Barcelona, Spain, under the surface of which were hidden thousands of magnets that provide the repelling energy to make the board hover.
The slickly shot video for the culminates with McGouran jumping a Lexus parked under a gap in a ramp, then eating it after landing the apparently difficult to ride device — which, sadly, is too ludicrously expensive to be for sale.
Other skaters are seen giving Slide a go, including one who incidentally proved the board has Marty’s beat in one respect: unlike McFly’s, the Slide is able to work over an admittedly shallow pool of water.
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