 It all started with Back to the Future Part II. Marty McFly travels to the year 2015, and he ends up getting chased by futuristic bullies on hoverboards. When the film opened in 1989, the whole world decided that this was the future. Of course we'll be riding around on hoverboards someday. Well, 2015 is right around the corner, and we've seen at least one real working hoverboard. But you need a huge copper floor to ride it, and it only floats half an inch off the ground. Not exactly where we thought we'd be in 2015, according to the movie, but we're getting there. Maybe we don't need a pink board and moon shoes to make getting around a little more awesome. In the past few years, dozens of startup companies have slapped motors on just about anything that moves. Bikes, individual wheels, scooters, unicycles, roller skates, longboards, skateboards, and plenty of other weird things. They last long enough for your daily commute, and they're fast and easy ways to get from point A to point B, and they're super fun to ride. Okay, so I may not be floating six inches off the ground on my way to work any time soon, but the real dream of the hoverboard, that effortless and cool personal transport, might actually come true. But what's it gonna look like? How will I be getting to work in the future? Aaron Aders is the founder of a company called Leaf Technologies, and he and his partner Dan Seigren created the Leaf skateboard. It's a longboard with two additional wheels with motors that rotate individually, allowing you to complete 180 degree turns without lifting off the ground. It is insane. So what is Leaf? So the Leaf is a board that allows you to ride down the street like a snowboard, so you can ride it forwards, backwards, you can cruise sideways. You can spin 360 down the streets, just as you would as a snowboard, and that was the original dream we had, we were longtime snowboarders, really passionate about the sport, and just kills us during the summer with nowhere to ride. So this was a childhood dream come true of being able to ride like a snowboard everywhere we go. So this looks a lot like a traditional skateboard, except for these two Frankenstein motors here. Yeah, so this is a six-wheel system based on a framework of a piece called a freeboard, amazing device, but you have to have a hill, and if you don't live near hills like we do in Manhattan, we're out of luck. So the drive wheels drive you forward, if you go sideways it's going to drive you this way, you can even go backwards, whichever way you point it's going to drive. We have three tracks to send the AC signal to the motor. We have brushes that connect the controller, so the brushes are always touching the rings, no matter what direction the motors are turning. How fast can this thing go? We've tested it, and it's gone up to 20 miles per hour. It's actually probably able to go a lot faster than that, but we want to keep it safe. When you first got on this thing, did it take you a while to adjust and learn? It's kind of like your first day snowboarding when you get on the wheeled version, just to get used to that, but by the end of the day you'll be shredding. I'll admit, I've never snowboarded before, so I don't know about shredding, but I've been skateboarding for over a decade, so I figured it couldn't be that difficult. I slipped my feet into the holsters, hit the throttle on the Bluetooth remote control, and I was off. My back wheels immediately started to drift out because I was riding it like a skateboard, with most of my weight toward the front. But then I shifted my weight instead to both of my heels, and then to my toes, and back to my heels. Everything clicked, and I started to get the hang of it. This is what snowboarding on pavement is like. After a while, I even managed to revert or turn 180 degrees without lifting the wheels off the ground. I was feeling pretty good about myself. But then Aaron got on, and I was blown away. I believe skateboarding is insanely fun and surprisingly easy. Even though I've never snowboarded before, I think I could get the hang of this and carve through the streets. But for as cool as it is, it's still very similar to a skateboard. You can change bikes and skateboards all you want and make them electric and more powerful. Or you can do what Inventus does and come up with completely new modes of transportation. They've created some crazy rideables, like the Solo Wheel, Hover Tracks, Lunacycle, and Orbit Wheels. And they're doing it all from a small office in Camas, Washington. Tell me about Inventus and what you guys do here. We do everything he mentions. Inventus so far, everything he mentions is from me. What is your favorite toy to ride around here? Last few months, I've been riding the Hover Tracks in office. I want to go to a different part of the building, I can get there so quickly, talk to someone and zoom right back. Do these work indoors only or also outside? The Hover Tracks actually was designed for indoors. Because the wheels are so small. So mainly I'm thinking for airports, warehouses, shopping malls, anything that's convenient like going around. You can almost like you're walking yourself. You can spin, quick spin, go somewhere, turn around, go back. And then do you ride the Solo Wheel around here? Solo Wheel is more transportation for outside. You want to go from one place to another. They call that a last mile. So they can get out of the train, get a bus, ride that to where we want to go. It's got a handle on it. Right, it's got a briefcase. So it's convenient. People are starting to see this now as not just a toy. It is a fun thing to use, but it's more than a toy. It's transportation, something you can travel miles on. So where are these popular? They're very popular in China, very popular in France and the rest of Europe, Germany. So you sort of just like ride that from the house to the train. And we're trying to promote that in the US too, because obviously in places like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, that's something you can do. So it sounds like it could be pretty convenient for commuting, but how easy is it to ride? How does the Solo Wheel work? It generally takes people 20 minutes to an hour to learn. Everybody we've ever taught has learned it. So it works by you doing as little as possible and letting it take over for you. The whole concept is it's trying to balance you just like you would balance a stick on your hand. So your hand is the Solo Wheel. Yeah, the hand is the Solo Wheel, and you're the stick up there. If your stick up here is moving around and bending and moving like that, it's going to be obviously harder for you to do it. So the less you do on the Solo Wheel, the easier it is. Okay. Can I see you ride this thing? So to get on it, you basically just want to put your leg on the pad, and then you can put your other foot on there. Wow. And then it's just as I'm, as I feel it falling over, I can just twist it to keep up right. Okay. Okay, so I think I get how this is supposed to work, but let's see what happens when I get on. These two companies are working on the bleeding edge, inventing things no one has seen before. But what if you want something more simple to say, ride to work on right now? You've got a few really good options actually. There's the Zboard, which is what I like to call the Hummer of electric longboards. The deck is huge, and so are the wheels. And it works in an interesting way. You lean forward on the front foot pad to accelerate, and do the same on the back pad to slow down. Then there's the Ego Cruiser. It's a super simple electric longboard that's controlled with a handheld remote, and has a top speed of 12 and a half miles per hour. The best thing about this board, it's only 700 bucks. The Boosted Board costs $1,500, but I'd say it's justified. It has two motors that allow the board to hit 20 miles an hour going uphill. But it only has a range of six miles. What's neat about this board is its three settings, beginner, intermediate, and expert, each with a speed throttle. And finally, there's the Self-Balancing Unicycle, or SBU. It's exactly that. It's a unicycle that has a three-axis gyro and a three-axis accelerometer, very similar to what you'd find in a Segway. Learning to ride it is pretty difficult, but once you do, you can cruise around town at 12 and a half miles an hour while looking oh so cool. And this is just the beginning. As battery technology advances, we're going to see more efficient, faster rideables. It's great to see so many companies playing ball in this space, and it has me really excited about the future. And hey, maybe someday I'll get my hoverboard.