A workplace discussion about the future of the Hoverboard:
The problem with the though process that we are only a couple of years away from having a commercial hoverboard, like what they had in the world of Back to the Future is flawed. If you think about what things are different in their timeline verses our timeline.
When Marty traveled back to 1955 and got into the chase scene with Biff and his gang, to get his quick getaway he accidentally invents the skateboard. Where in our world the skateboard was not recognizably invented until 1958. This would (at bare minimum) bump back the invention of the Hoverboard a good 3 years.
So the moral of the story is that based on this onformation, we might not expect to see the Hoverboard until 2018 since we didn’t have a Marty go back and alter our timeline. (At least that we know about…)