This week, Lexus introduced a short teaser video for SLIDE, a hoverboard that appears to not just live up to our Back to the Future II dreams but, at least stylistically, improve on them. Better yet, it's more science than science fiction. Here's how it works—and why you won't find one at Toys'R'Us any time soon.

Let's start with that teaser video, a scant 37 seconds of hoverboard hype that almost prompts more skepticism than excitement. A bamboo and carbon fiber skateboard, emitting wisps of smoke, levitates an inch or two off of what appears to be a concrete surface. A foot approaches as if to mount and ride—and then nothing. We cut away.

The Lexus hoverboard really does live up to its name.

That's not a lot to put one's faith in. We're barely a year past the most recent convincing hoverboard hoax—a Funny or Die promotion, it turned out—and are halfway through the year in which BTTFII took place, a ripe time for attention-grabbing tie-ins.

Even the information Lexus did provide at the time didn't jibe with what the teaser shows. According to the company's briefly stated promotional materials, the device employs "magnetic levitation" to achieve (and maintain) lift-off, which would be well and good if it weren't for where it was levitating.

"It's a tease, right? It gives you the impression that this thing is floating on top of concrete," says Mike Norman, Director of the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Lab. "Which it's not."

Fortunately, the bad news stops there. Surface trickery aside—there are probably magnets or steel mixed in or just underneath that concrete—the Lexus hoverboard really does live up to its name.

How It Works

Magnets. That's the short version. The long version means steeling yourself for a light dose of physics.

According to Lexus, its hoverboard relies on superconductors and magnets, which combine to repel the force of gravity and lift an object—like, say, a fancy skateboard and its rider—above the ground.