Real hoverboard available for pre-order, but costs $20,000 and flies for just minutes

A huge number of companies have been trying to make a real hoverboard — and rolling ones have taken over the world — but a company claims to be the first to put one up for sale

Pre-orders have opened for perhaps the first ever commercially available hoverboard.

A new model created by space company ArcaSpace uses a huge set of fans to lift people up in the air and allow them to hover. But it costs $20,000 and the massive amount of power needed means that it can only fly for a few minutes.

The electric “flying machine” has 272 horsepower and 203,000 watts of installed power, according to ArcaSpace, making it “the most powerful and lightest personal vehicle ever created”. It is built out of composite materials and can fly up to 30 centimetres off the ground.

Because of the power needed to keep the fans going, the hoverboard can only fly for up to six minutes. But the company claims that it can be charged back up using a dock that will give it power in 35 minutes.

The ArcaBoard is available for order now for $19,900, and the optional charging dock costs another $4,500. It will start being shipped from April 2016.

One of the biggest successes of the year and the Christmas period was the so-called hoverboard or swegway, which let people move around on a board floating just above the ground. But it worked using wheels, meaning that people weren’t really hovering at all.

The year has seen a huge number of companies attempting to make real-life hoverboards, including a magnet-based one created by Lexus. The fever was perhaps set off by 2015 also being the year that is travelled to in Back To The Future, which envisioned a world of people riding around on floating skateboards.

But none of the models shown off through the year were commercially available, and many allowed people to only hover slightly off the ground.