You find Segways secretly cool but would never be caught dead riding them? No worries, hipster nerds. There’s an electric skateboard in the works that’ll let you cruise the streets in style.
Intuitive Motion’s Z-board is a weight-sensing system using controls akin to a Segway's – lean forward to go ahead, lean back to stop. You steer by balancing, as you would a normal skateboard.
The boards were unveiled earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and won the “DEMO God Award” at the 2012 VentureBeat Demo Conference earlier this month.
The skateboard has a top speed of 17 miles per hour and a range of 10 miles per charge. Intuitive Motion is taking pre-orders, starting at $499. They should ship this summer.
Special edition models include the San Francisco, which has increased torque to make it suited for cruising up the city’s famous hilly streets, and the Santa Monica, with increased range and smoother wheels. To see the board in action, check out the promo video below.
--Via IEEE
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website and follow him on Twitter. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.
