Skateboard legend Tony Hawk rides a real hoverboard
You don't have to daydream about "Back to the Future" to ride a hoverboard. Hendo Hover, with the help of Hawk, hopes its Kickstarter campaign will bring this high-tech fun to the masses.
Ever since we first saw Marty McFly hop on a hoverboard to escape the bad guys in "Back to the Future Part II," we've been coveting our own futuristic skateboard.
We've suffered through hoverboard hoaxes -- we're looking at you, Christopher Lloyd! But now, thanks to a company called Hendo Hover, it looks like we might actually get the hoverboard of our dreams.
"This is real, folks," skateboard icon Tony Hawk Hawk says in a new video promoting the product. "This is the real hoverboard right here, so forget everything you know."
Hendo teamed with Hawk (who was also ironically in the hoverboard hoax video from HUVr) to demonstrate the current capabilities of the Hendo hoverboard.
In the video, Hawk shows off Hendo's hoverboard on a copper-lined skate ramp at Arx Pax Labs in Los Gatos, Calif., and even performs a few tricks. Considering the board can only hover an inch off the ground, the prototype still impressed the seasoned skateboarder. Hawk even performed his first 10-80 on the spinning hoverboard.
The hover engine works with Lenz's law -- which is "a way of using a magnetic field to create a secondary magnetic field on a conductive surface. If you hover a 50,000 kilogram train, then why not a building or a house or an operating room or a precious piece of art?" Greg Henderson, Hendo hoverboard inventor and co-founder of Arx Pax, said in a recent CNET video.
Hendo hopes to put hover technology in the hands of inventors and tinkerers around the world with a Kickstarter campaign that includes a real hoverboard and a hover developer kit called the Whitebox.
The Kickstarter has already raised $450,536 -- well over its goal of $250,000. And the campaign still has plenty of time to gain even more backers before it ends on December 14.