Hendo 2.0 Concept Art
Hendo
We’re almost at the end of 2015, and the question isn’t if Back To The Future’s Marty McFly would have a hoverboard to ride, but which one?
If McFly has any sense of branding, perhaps he’ll be swayed by the new Hendo 2.0, a redesigned magnetic levitation board featuring design input from legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk.
But McFly is hardly limited to just one type. On shelves, there’s the hands-free Segway-style hoverboard that is neither a board, nor does it hover. There’s the Lexus-built magnetic levitation hoverboard that works in exactly one specially built skate-park. Earlier this year, an American even flew a homebuilt hoverboard across a record-setting distance over a lake in Canada.
Like the Lexus venture and this student-built project from 2011, the Hendo 2.0 is essentially a magnetic levitation platform. Last year, the first version of the board raised half a million dollars on Kickstarter, and delivered a hovering board, with a couple of caveats. First, the board requires a special conductive surface for its electromagnetic levitation to work, so it can’t hover just anywhere. Second, it’s less an athletic tool and more a clumsy airhockey puck, as Tony Hawk discovered in a test ride last year.
