No matter who you ask or what year you're talking about,
the idea of flying cars always seems to come up
as cementing when the future has arrived.
So, what future were we promised,
how far have we gotten,
and how much further up do we have to go?
And I'm Marques Brownlee and I review dope new tech.
But on this show, I'm rewinding the clock
to look at the tech of the past
that we thought would be our future.
This is "Retro Tech: Flying Cars."
Hey, what's up? MKBHD here.
I know I'm unboxing something today
that has something to do with flying cars,
that it's this, uh, iconic piece of tech
that apparently was going to usher us
into this new era of personal transportation.
We'll see about that.
This is definitely the biggest box
we've had on this show.
There is no indication though anywhere on this box what it is.
It's like a riddle. What would be a piece of tech
that would promise to revolutionize personal transport,
but also not fit in a smaller box than this?
I'm guessing it's not a flying car.
There is a giant wheel. Oh, is this the Segway?
Oh, it's a Segway. I know what a Segway is. Okay.
I cannot wait to try to ride this.
It's really hea-- oh, well, it has to be heavy
because it's got to counterbalance.
There it is, the original Segway.
Is it a flying car? No.
Is it even a hovercraft? No. Well, let's get into it.
This is the "Welcome to the evolution
of personal mobility" pamphlet.
Lots of warnings.
"Don't roll this over bumps.
Don't ride this over curbs and steps
and obstacles and steep slopes
and slippery surfaces and loose materials."
Whew.
All right. Can I get a helmet?
Okay, I'm going to be the expert.
I'm going to put all the swag that came with it on.
This is a Segway armband.
The expert would probably have this on, right?
It's too bad I'm too swole for this.
I'll probably have to put it on my wrist.
That is nerdy. Wow.
I hate to break it to you, Segway,
but this is the nerdiest part of this whole thing.
There you go. Let's fire it up.
Oh!
Okay.
I'm a little dizzy. I'll be right back.
Wow.
That was fun.
Is this a flying car? No.
But this is my segue into the next segment.
I'm gonna have you check underneath your chair.
( laughs )
Oh, yeah, it's my buddy.!
Oh, guys. It's the '80s?
It's the '80s in a car?
A DeLorean, a DMC-12, with Mr. Fusion on the back.
This is the flying car that most people think of
when they think of a flying car.
Marques: All right, I guess let's walk back
to, like, the concept of flying cars in general.
Why was this such an obsession for us?
Negin:
would be obsessed with flying cars
because we're just a car culture.
- ( engine revs ) - ( tires squeal )
Tim:
has been always that notion of freedom.
Announcer:
has brought with it a new way of life.
And that freedom is just key to the American experience.
Cars are everything in America.
Even though we don't have flying cars today,
it's not because we didn't try.
Announcer:
Negin:
of attempts of cars that were supposed to fly,
and they crashed.
Tim:
that actually looked like it had a road to production,
it was called the Aerocar, way back in the 1940s.
The Aerocar, it had the wings in the back
that could turn it into a functioning airplane.
And this 60-mile-an-hour car takes off.
Announcer:
and fly that wild blue yonder.
Joseph: Is it a car that can fly,
or is it just a plane that can be broken down?
( imitates explosion )
Cooler heads prevailed,
and the Aerocar didn't move forward.
Marques: Okay, so, there were actually some attempts
at flying cars for real.
But how did science fiction
impact how we thought about flying cars?
Science fiction has really been obsessed with flying cars--
movies like "Blade Runner" and "Star Wars,"
and of course "Back to the Future."
The first time I ever saw a flying car was in "The Jetsons."
Joseph:
very similar to the ones that we see in airports,
television screens where they can video chat
like we do with FaceTime,
and they have flying cars.
So you say to yourself, "Well, why not flying cars?
Why can't I have a flying car in my garage?"
Caseen:
But obviously there are all sorts of challenges
to making that happen in real life.
Marques:
but just envisioning a piece of technology
isn't enough to bring it into being.
No matter how compelling the idea
of a flying car may seem,
the technology and the physics
just doesn't seem to want to play along.
So, today I'm meeting up with fellow car tech enthusiast
Gali Russell from HyperChange
to find out just how close-- er, how far we are
from this future of flying cars.
Marques: All right, so I guess the basic challenge
for a car like this today to get it to fly
is to get all the air underneath it.
Yeah, it's a first principles physics problem
of literally moving all of this air super quickly
with enough force to get some sort of lift-off.
Marques:
that sounds like a lot of energy.
To lift it off the ground,
we would need 1.6 megawatts of power.
And that just gets you into the air,
and then you have to stay there.
Yeah.
Even if we theoretically solve that problem,
how are we transferring the air below the car?
So, there's two schools of thought
of how we can actually get enough force at once to lift this thing.
You could have some sort of propeller system,
-
And then you have Elon and Tesla working on
literally repurposing rocket tech
with all these kind of mini cold gas thrusters to get it to lift off.
Okay, so, a system like this,
if you were to build it into this car,
how would it work? Where would you put it?
So, this is where the system would go.
Okay, so the back seats are just gone?
Yeah, we're pushing the laws of physics.
You'd need to use all the space.
Marques:
the pumps, the thruster, everything's going back here.
- Gali:
- to remove from the inside of a car. - Yeah.
Marques:
you would need around 1.6 megawatts of power
for the car to hover with no forward movement.
And this model's 100-kilowatt hour battery
would be able to sustain that hovering
for about 3 to 4 minutes,
as opposed to the nearly 400 miles
you'd be able to travel if you stayed on the ground.
And the calculations only account for the weight of the driver,
so if you want to bring your friends along,
your time in the air would be even shorter.
All right, so, we're making our way into the future.
The original idea for flying cars though
was just, like, get from point A to point B.
Maybe there's better versions of that future that aren't flying.
The Tesla in some way embodies that
because what makes it so advanced
is not that it can fly, but it has software.
You know, it can kind of drive itself.
I wasn't around in the '60s,
'70s, '80s, '90s when we were imagining flying cars,
so when I first was growing up and thinking about the future of cars,
I didn't think they should fly.
I thought, "Wow, they should be more like
the high-tech stuff we have today."
And now we're actually kind of seeing that start to happen.
Our desire to innovate and create
the next revolutionary technology is never-ending.
And so while we may still be pretty far away from a world of flying cars,
there is another type of cutting-edge flying tech
that we've been dreaming about for decades.
- Hey! - I need to borrow your...
Hover Board?
Nothing captured the imagination more than Hover Boards.
I wanted one. I know as a kid, that's something you could feel
you could talk your parents into buying you.
A DeLorean? Not so much.
I mean, what's better than a skateboard
than a skateboard that can lift you off the ground?
And I remember as a kid
believing that these things might actually be real.
As a joke, Robert Zemeckis, before the film came out,
gave an interview and said that Hover Boards were real.
Zemeckis:
it's just that parents' groups have not let
the toy manufacturers make 'em, and we got our hands on some.
Tim:
But they made so many kids excited that everybody wanted 'em.
But it never really came to any sort of reality
until we started to hear about this revolution in personal transport.
So, it's the early 2000s and we start to hear this buzz
about this transportation product from Dean Kamen,
who was already a well-respected inventor.
It was codenamed "Ginger."
Tim:
"This next thing is gonna be bigger than the PC."
It is rumored to be the technological advance
of this century, an invention that could change
the way people live.
Bigger, perhaps, than the Internet.
It's finally time for the big reveal.
Tim:
which was the biggest morning show of all time.
Dean Kamen's standing there talking
with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer.
Negin:
Do we have to do something here?
...and it is the Segway.
It's the Segway.
- Gibson: Okay. - Tim:
The best part of that launch is Diane Sawyer
trying to hide her disappointment
at finally seeing this thing.
I'm tempted to say, "That's it?"
Negin:
that just evaporated people's dignity.
Joseph:
'Cause, let's be honest, once they removed the handlebars
and they became hoverboards,
people were going crazy for them.
This is what everybody's talking about.
It's like a Segway without the handle.
Announcer:
The 360 hoverboard. The antithesis of the Segway.
Celebrities are riding them, like Justin Bieber
and Kendall Jenner and Martha Stewart,
who is obviously the coolest.
And then the other weird thing about it
is that it caught fire all the time.
( screams )
It got so bad that "Saturday Night Live"
actually had to do a parody.
Announcer:
because they also explode!
Ultimately, they were a failure because they were a failure,
but they also didn't live up to the thing that we all wanted,
which was "Back to the Future II," hovering aboveground.
Marques:
hoverboards over the years
haven't had the best reputation.
So, I'm here with actor, writer,
and comedian Michael Ian Black,
and we're gonna test out a few of these models
to see if any of them won't kill you.
This is Dope or Nope.
Michael, thanks for joining me.
What is your experience with hoverboards over the years?
- Almost none. - Okay, perfect.
I guess we just get into the first one.
Here it is under our desk here.
Uh, this is what-- this is what I'm used to.
- Right. - I'm from this era.
- So, you have experience with this. - I do.
- Do you? - No. No.
Oh, this is gonna be good.
Marques, I'm 49 years old.
What this looks like to me is a stress fracture.
- Button. Okay. - ( beeps, chimes )
So you look kinda like this.
Yeah, that is not superior to walking.
But you just look so much cooler.
This is-- this is already dope.
I know I'm giving this a dope already.
- This is amazing. - I mean, you do look cool on it
because you have a kind of confidence on it
that I don't think I'm gonna possess.
- ( beeps ) - Oh-- all right.
Oh, jeez. Oh, come on!
- Jesus. - All right, here.
Oh, my God, I've never felt older in my life.
- Slowly get your balance. - Mm-hmm.
I'm not trying to move. All right.
That's not bad. There you go.
- There you go. - Do I look terrified?
You look better than if you were walking that speed.
- Yeah. - Oh, my God.
- You were really good at that. - I love this thing.
- I have to give it a dope. - Much to my dismay,
I also have to give it a dope
because I want to be able to do it.
All right, dope. Next up.
- Oh, jeez. - Oh, boy.
I've never seen one of these.
It's called the Airwheel.
To me, it looks like a Rascal
that you drive around in the grocery store,
except that-- just so much less safe.
- I'll try it. Yeah. - Want to give it a shot?
- All right, so I'm gonna get on. - You think kickstand out
- and you just go for it? - Just...
- give me a second. - All right.
I'm terrified.
Bailing looks a lot harder on that.
- But you look comfortable. - Yeah, well, I'm sitting.
Sitting is something that I feel like I do fairly well.
I know I look like I'm taking a ( bleep ) right now.
When you're too lazy to walk and even too lazy to stand,
this is the gift gizmo for you.
- You want to try it? - Yeah.
You looked much cooler on the other one.
Marques: Yeah, this is-- this feels kinda ominous.
This is a great solution to a problem nobody had.
- I'm gonna say that's a nope. - Nope.
All right, next up. Ooh, that's heavy.
- Wow. - Segway Robotics.
I mean, I'm sold right here.
"Robot inside. The future is coming."
Which is pervy. I'm sorry. That's perverted.
It's got a name. Loomo.
Open the box from the front. That's the front.
Well, that seems to be the robot. Out.
Oh, look at the size of this.
Here's the power button.
( whirring )
Does it balance itself and roll around by itself?
- Seems to. - I'm gonna get on it and see what happens.
- All right. - It's a hoverboard in some respects,
but I'm not even sure what it does.
I know my feet go here.
Much easier to get on than the other thing.
- Oh, jeez. - Oh, my God.
I mean, it's cool, but what is its purpose?
I don't know.
Oh, my God, there's a transform button.
- Michael: Oh, it transforms? - You transform it,
the head swivels around, and it's a robot.
Michael: Weird. Okay.
Loomo personal companion, follow me.
Loomo: Here you are. I will follow you now.
Please watch out for the people around.
Okay.
Come on. Come on.
Come on.
It's your personal transportation and it's your camera on wheels.
- Hey, Loomo, follow me. - I cannot find you.
- Hey, Loomo, follow me. - Stand in front of-- there you are.
- I found you. - Hey, Loomo! Follow me.
- ( dings ) - Follow me, Loomo!
- I cannot find you. - I'm right here!
There you are. I found you.
I found you. I found you.
Dang. That's locked in right now.
- Michael: Loomo, sit. - Loomo, stop following.
Loomo: I cannot find you. Please stand in front of me.
- I cannot find you. - Loomo.
Please stand in-- there you are.
I found you. I cannot find you.
Please stand in front of-- there you are.
The technology is perfect.
God, it's so cool and I hate to say it,
but there's just no good use of it
and I can't imagine it's cheap.
- So that's a nope. - I agree with your entire assessment.
It's nope. Sorry, Loomo.
I cannot find you.
Marques:
in theory, riding around on hoverboards
is a future that's within our grasp.
So to find out just how close
we may be now to that reality,
I'm gonna speak to a duo that's spent the last 10 years
perfecting their hoverboard technology--
Alexandru Duru and Philippe Maalouf from Omni Hoverboards.
So, if you were to explain this hoverboard to me,
someone who's never seen it, what is it and how does it work?
Alexandru:
The propellers apply force on a larger area.
Philippe:
And to succeed with it, that in itself was the innovation.
Marques:
has an array of 10 miniature propellers,
which are powered by a bank of batteries
in the center console and a handheld throttle
that allows the rider to control the height,
which can be as high as 100 meters.
How do you think your hoverboard is different
from the hoverboards that people saw
in, like, movies and TV that they might be inspired by?
Well, one thing about the movie "Back to the Future Part II,"
it was an extension of a skateboard.
And a lot of people wanted to create a hoverboard
that looked visually like the one in the movie.
But for us to have a hoverboard
that functions the way it does in the movie,
we had to not care about how it looks.
It's all about functionality.
It's not like you're riding the vehicle.
It's you yourself that's flying.
You lean in one direction,
you will go forward in that direction.
It's like a surfboard, but you're surfing the air.
It's biomechanical. It's an extension of your body.
It's a bit like you acquired a superpower.
I'm sort of picturing, like, a futuristic field
where there's a bunch of people all sort of hovering around
and going through these courses.
It's a fun world to picture.
Yeah, it's fun just to fly. Like, it's a real trip.
I mean, you know, some people just want to fly it.
I think that's the best part of the hoverboard.
The very idea that you're flying,
it's a classic dream of mankind.
I think the hoverboard could be the beginning of something.
All right, after all that,
I guess, uh, turns out flying cars,
aka giving everyone helicopters,
is probably not the best idea.
But I still love the idea
of recreational individual flight.
Like, I think if you ask anyone what superpower they would want to have,
a lot of people would say they would just want to be able to fly like a bird.
So maybe let's keep working on that.
Thanks for watching.
Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.