It’s a bit of a letdown…
Welcome to the future. Thanks to Arca Space and the company's new hoverboard, you can now ride a board hovering about a foot off the ground across any terrain. They call it a “revolutionary breakthrough for transportation.” Jump with joy, shout out about how excited you are, and check your bank account balance to see how soon you buy one. Now, let me give you the real details.
To begin, it weighs 180 lbs (82 kg) and measures 57 x 30 x 6 inches (145 x 76 x 15 cm) so it isn’t particularly convenient to carry around. On the other hand, there isn’t much of a good reason to take it very far because its battery only lasts 6 minutes once you hop on — not exactly what you need for your daily commute. You can’t make a quick stop to recharge it either. That simple task takes six hours.
The ArcaBoard uses 36 electric ducted fans, so you can just imagine the noise it makes. If you weigh more than 176 lbs (80 kg), you’ll need the Enhanced Thrust version that has a battery endurance of only three minutes.
SEE ALSO: Lexus Brings the Futuristic Hoverboard to Reality
The hoverboard’s range is proportional to its speed, which is limited to 12.5 mph (20 km/h) — about the speed of a biker. On the plus side, you don’t need a pilot’s license!
Acra Science explains the $19,900 price tag by saying that it is a first of its kind high-end machine.
So if you’re looking for a bank-account-emptying, extra-noisy, heavy, large, time-consuming vehicle for short-lived fun, by all means, get your order in for the April 2016 shipment of boards. Make sure you wear a helmet!
On the other hand, it is 2015, and the ArcaBoard appears to be the closest thing to the technology from Back to the Future: Part II that we've seen so far. As CNET says: it is “the equivalent of those massive '80s cell phones the size of bricks. One day, when we're all zipping around on our slim, skateboard-sized hoverboards, we'll look back on the original ArcaBoard with a delightful twinge of nostalgia.”
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