I’m sure you’ve all seen pictures or video footage of at least one of the hoverbike prototypes doing the rounds over the past year or so, and I think you’ll agree that we have a long way to go before we get a viable consumer version of any of them. But one Japanese company reckons it’ll have one in mass production by 2022.
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In fact, ALI Technologies is even keen to let you pre-order a hoverbike in the next two months, which, at this stage, will likely cost you about the same as a small car. While the Tokyo-based company usually makes small drones, it now wants to create a vehicle for countries with poor or dangerous roads, allowing them to simply hover over them rather than mincing up the wheels of a traditional vehicle.
“We’ll create a bike first in order to get flying cars widely used in society eventually,” chief executive, Shuhei Komatsu, told The Japan Times. “Our hoverbike is an ensemble of drone technologies.”
I don’t know about opening up pre-orders just yet, though, it seems like there’s still a long way to go. Have a look at the company’s prototype courtesy of Cnet Japan below.
At the moment, it just seems like a really loud way to slowly hover over the loose screws dad dropped in the garage. “We want to deliver it to customers from around 2022,” Komatsu continued.
Weirdly, the bike is only meant to hover a few centimetres off the ground. Look, I don’t wanna rain on old mate’s parade here, but I just don’t know if that’s gonna cut it. I reckon you need to be at least a metre off the ground to avoid the dangers of a poorly built road, you know? And don’t even get me started on how many legs this thing has the potential to slice off.
But hey, they’ve got plenty of time to iron out the kinks before 2022. Here’s hoping the company can deliver.
