The ArcaBoard is a hoverboard that actually hovers over any surface

Hoverboards have had something of a renaissance this year. Segways-that-don’t-actually-hover have become a pop culture punchline, while Lexus made waves with its awesome-looking-but-not-that-useful levitating skateboard over the summer.

Now another company called ArcaSpace is looking to join the party with something that works more like the hoverboards of our dreams, even though it still looks incredibly difficult to ride.

Unlike the Lexus model and other iterations, it doesn’t have to be placed on a special surface to ride, which means there’s some degree of feasibility in the real world. In fact, ArcaSpace says it should work over land, water, snow or ice,  though it’s only shown floating above solid ground in the video and – despite all the lofty claims – it looks utterly impractical to ride.

Still, it levitates nearly a foot off the ground – leaving no doubt to passerby it’s actually hovering – and is powered by 36 electric fans, yielding 430 pounds of thrust or 272 horsepower. There’s also some self-balancing tech to keep you from falling off, and it can fly for a whole six minutes on a charge.

It’s easy to be sarcastic about a product that doesn’t seem to be very useful, but the ArcaBoard is the closest thing to a street-ready hoverboard we’ve seen yet. Right now it looks like it’s more struggle than fun to ride, but hopefully it means a practical hoverboard is only a few years away.

If you want be the earliest of early adopters, the ArcaBoard will set you back $19,900. Be sure to check out the much-too-serious demo video above if you’ve got a boatload of cash lying around. Though as The Verge points out, it seems you can’t actually go past the checkout page right now anyway

➤ ArcaBoard [ArcaSpace via The Verge]