Lexus introduces their first hoverboard, Slide
This past week, Lexus, introduced a short video of Slide, a hoverboard. Now, they aren’t the first ones to introduce it, but just by looking at the video, it’s pretty cool for us designers here at Beyond Design. Made out of bamboo and carbon fiber, Slide levitates off the ground by an inch or two from looks to be like a concrete surface. The device allows for magnetic levitation, to achieve someone to lift off and go. Even so, we have to imagine what is underneath the concrete surface (magnets or steel material mixed in).
Lexus has explained that the hoverboard relies on superconductors and magnets off the ground – combining the force of gravity to repel. They chose to use a superconductor, unlike the Hendo Hoverboard, which just used a plain conductor. The superconductor relies on the Meissner Effect, which means this – if you take a magnetic field near a superconductor, it starts up the current in the superconductor and creates a mirrored magnetic field on the other side. It doesn’t die away, making the levitations vice versa.
As for the smoke coming out of Slide, it is liquid nitrogen that cools the superconductors below that transitional temperature (this is the temperature that it has to be at to be superconducting). When the liquid nitrogen runs out, the superconductors get warmer, which causes the hoverboard to stop hovering, until you start the process all over again.
The short video that Lexus introduced to the world of their hovercraft attracted more than 3 million views – in just two days. From the video, we can tell that this may be the first functional hoverboard that outshines and over exceeds the expectations of potential users. To read more on this article, please click here. To see more information on the Hendo Hoverboard, read our blog.
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