Hovercar (fiction)

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A hovercar is a transport vehicle appearing in works of science fiction. It is used for personal transportation in the same way a modern automobile is employed.

It is incapable of flying but does elevate itself some distance from the ground through some repulsion technology, presumably exploiting some short range anti-gravity principle so as to eliminate friction forces which act against conventional vehicles. Unlike an air cushion vehicle this does not produce a dust cloud.

The closest real-world device is the hovercraft, which elevates itself above a water or level hard surface using a cushion of air retained by a flexible skirt. Such devices are not considered to be hover cars, however — that term is used only for the fictional device. Examples of hover cars can be found in many science fiction movies and television series such as Star Wars and Star Trek and in futuristic racing video games.

[edit] Examples in other media

The playable hero in the GameCube game Pokemon Colosseum uses a hovering bike with only one wheel and two hovering pads.
The hover cars of Punchbowl Pennsylvania, USA all seem, to look like normal cars with wheels that even roll. However, the wheels are merely landing gear for the cars. When the cars start up, the wheels will turn so their fronts will point downward, and an unidentified propulsion system will levitate them above the ground, with what appears to be steam coming out of the cars when they're hovering.
In the Jak and Daxter series video games, hovering vehicles appear several times: the A-grav zoomer hover motorbike in the first game, and the cars of Haven city in Jak 2 and Jak 3.
Written in 1987, Berts dagbok is the first among the Bert diaries. In this book, the fictional character Bert Ljung writes that he believes that within 10 years, all cars will be able to fly.