Is This A Real Working ‘Back To The Future’ Hoverboard? (Video)
By The Movie God
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Tuesday, March 4th, 2014 at 6:40 pm
We’ve seen glimpses of the possibility of a real working hoverboard, the floating skateboard made famous in Back to the Future II, in the past, but nothing that someone could actually get on and ride.
Yesterday a video was uploaded by a company called HUVr, which claims to show the first real-deal working hoverboard ever created. It begins with Back to the Future star Christopher Lloyd showing up in a DeLorean (as he tends to do) and handing off the high-tech board to skateboarding legend Tony Hawk before Hawk and other celebrities talk about being the first to experience something no one thought they’d ever get to experience.
At first glance and without any other knowledge the video might just blow your mind. But there’s more going on here than first meets the eye. Click on over to the other side to see the video.
Here’s a description of the project from the “company” on their official site:
What began as a summer project in 2010 at the MIT Physics Graduate Program has evolved into one of the most exciting independent products to be developed out of MIT since the high-powered lithium-ion batteries developed by Yet-Ming Chiang in 2001. Our team consists of materials science, electricity & magnetism experts who’ve solved an important part of one of science’s mysteries: the key to antigravity.
The HUVr Board team ultimately aims to improve the efficiency, speed and sustainability of mass transportation. Yet rather than spend several more years closed off from the world while investing in research and development, the team and our world-class investors have worked to change the economics R&D by marketing this exciting consumer product in order to fund ongoing R&D.
The site looks like a legit website, complete with legal information and quotes from investors such as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. They also have a Facebook and Twitter page.
It’s all just too good to believe. You want to believe it. I want to believe it. But, c’mon…right?
This is where the dream smashers unfortunately have to step in. In this world of lies we sadly live in, you can’t really believe anything you see anymore, whether it’s a reality TV show or documentary and so on. It’s just the way it is. And that appears to be the case here, as well.
It was discovered that the supposed MIT smartypants type who represents HUVr Tech in the video below, the one seen on the left of this group photo, is just another actor named Nelson Cheng. You can watch his acting reel at his official website and check out his IMDb page for past credits. And as Gizmodo’s Paleofuture points out, the domain name for HUVr Tech was registered way back in November of 2013, which seems a bit odd for something that would have been in development for years.
So what’s really going on here? At the top of the website you can see a pair of Back to the Future clocks, one for the present and one for the destination time, which in this case is December of 2014.
Could this really be for a working hoverboard that someone is attempting to make and they wanted to start getting people excited about it now with a bit of Hollywood trickery? Or is this for something completely different, a new product maybe?
Let’s just hope it’s not some viral marketing bit for a planned remake. Cities would burn by the hands of hordes of angry geeks.
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