No giant magnetic boards, no anemic Segways that promise to break ankles and hips. The latest hoverboards designs are turning into high-performance hovercrafts, and although battery life is still a critical detail to solve, developments like those from Zapata Racing are already giving rise to new world records. In its latest test, it covered a not insignificant 2,250 meters, and unlike the hoverboard that our friend McFly uses, it works without problems over water.
Only a couple of weeks ago, Matías shared with us the initial tests of the Flyboard Air, a hoverboard developed by Zapata Racing, a company known for its original Flyboard and its subsequent ZR Hoverboard. According to Franky Zapata himself, the new Flyboard Air can reach an altitude of three thousand meters and develop a top speed of 150 kilometers per hour. I imagine that evaluating those three thousand meters will require a ton of permits (after all, nobody wants to collide with it), but if we judge by its latest video, there is no doubt that the speed is very good.
The video was taken in Sausset-les-Pins, a beautiful coastal commune located in the south of France. As we can observe, the weather was not ideal, but Zapata aboard the Flyboard Air not only demonstrated extraordinary control of the device, but the flight was enough to establish a new Guinness mark, with 2,250 meters. This exceeds by more than eight times the distance traveled by Catalin Alexandru Duru aboard his own hoverboard in May of last year. It is supposed that the Flyboard Air is limited to ten minutes of flight, but as battery density improves, its prototypes will be able to stay in the air longer.
This success brings us to the question: When will it be ready for the public? As Matías indicated in the previous article, Zapata Racing has no intentions of mass-producing the Flyboard Air, and any limited sales process will probably target next year, not to mention the rigorous training that every aspiring hoverboard pilot will have to complete...
