Well about freakin’ time Lexus, you’ve only dropped a host of teaser videos on us so this has been a long time coming.

In a classic case of Back to the Future finally becoming a reality we have a real, working hoverboard rocking out at a skate park in Barcelona. One look at the video above and it becomes pretty clear that you can’t just grab one of these bad boys and take it for a spin where you please, both the board and the park needing some special attention. Mashable reports:

The hoverpark, which spans roughly 200 meters, was constructed using permanent magnets, allowing the superconducting hoverboard to float over it seamlessly. The innards need to be cooled to minus 197 degrees celsius via liquid nitrogen — hence the smoke you see billowing from the board’s sides.

“The magnetic field from the track is effectively ‘frozen’ into the superconductors in the board, maintaining the distance between the board and track – essentially keeping the board in a hover,” Evico’s CEO, Dr. Oliver de Haas, said in an email. “The force is strong enough that the rider can stand and even jump on the board.”

Lexus also released a behind-the-scenes look at how this marvel of modern science came to be which can be seen below:

The hoverboard is not available for commercial sale so don’t get your hopes up just yet. Cynics will point to this whole campaign as being a marketing tool for Lexus’ vehicles (and it is), but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy watching the labours of some very intelligent humans.

[source:mashable]