That’s the bottom line. Yes, a good bunch of us would like to hover around like Marty McFly from Back 2 The Future or ride in chariots like the gladiators of Rome, but one thing these companies seem to consistently miss is the price tag. Other points of failure include safety and most importantly the cool factor.

Segway was rolling out scooters for employees of Google to help them travel their spacious campus and you better believe people were falling left and right. Google has been doing all it can to correct the mess with Segway and its wounded employees. Things took a turn for the worse when it was discovered the Segway devices had a fault.

The HoverBike would probably not even perform as well as the Segway, being that you can’t stop and it has poor handling. Both of the devices are great ideas with poor implementation that can never make mass market penetration, without making proper adjustments.

A device / personal transporter would be ideal if it was light, compact and cheap. To me the ideal device would be along the lines of the Rocketeer. A backpack where the user can control the speeds and body adjustments can allow easy steering. Add some sort of height limitations and we are good to go.

The other option of course would be to hack a Wii Controller so it can steer a wheeled device with a wave of the arm. Then strap the Wii-mote onto an armband or something. I’m sure we’ll be reading about it soon. You can thank me later for advancing civilization.

In the meantime you can check the hoverbike video here and here.

Addon: It seems Sony is entering the hover market too. Sony patents Segway-esque skateboard