Hovery is a personal hovercraft. This notion alone is intriguing. It propounds the question of the real value of all-terrain personal mobility. It also sets forth the possibilities of a mode of transportation that is truly all-terrain, within limits, and the real functionality of such thing. In fact, the difficulty with this object is to establish whether its nature is ludic or functional: is it an expensive toy, or a necessary tool? Truly collapsible, Hovery is high-performance in its features: it inflates from the exhaust of a small 2-stroke engine and is capable of cruising over any type of terrain, wet or dry. It is about 2,25 m. (7.4 ft.) in diameter, weights a mere 48 kg. (106 lb.), and has a range of 1 hour at a top speed of 50 km/h (30 mph). It can be folded into a volume of 0,5 m3 (18 cu. ft.) to fit in the trunk of a car, and it can be assembled and ready to use in a few minutes. Hovery is more an invention than an object, and looks nuts-and-boltsy and unrefined in its aspect and interface. The driver sits atop and controls the vehicle with a joystick, an aeronautical feature that explains the object’s origin: Hovery was invented by aeronautical engineer and pilot Alberto Dei Castelli. His company, Aero DC, prides itself of selling Hoveries to the five continents. The question is how long until Hoveries become the mobile support of bright-colored advertisements.
