Today I rode a magnet. I planted my feet, and with a little push, I glided across the floor in a sublimely smooth, unfettered slide, floating above the ground. It was the first time a member of the press was allowed to try the new Hendo Hoverboard 2.0, and damn it felt good. But Arx Pax, the company behind it, has ambitions to move far more than one person at a time.

To get you up to speed, in fall 2014 Arx Pax unveiled what was essentially the first real, working hoverboard. It used proprietary "Magnetic Field Architecture" which enabled its Hover Engines to float over a passive conductive surface (copper or aluminum, but copper works best). It's the board you saw Tony Hawk ride in a metal half-pipe, and it lifted the likes of Buzz Aldrin and a sumo wrestler. Today we got the first real look at the Hendo Hoverboard 2.0, and it has a number of improvements over the original.

We All Float On

For starters, you can see that it's more skateboard-ish. It uses a traditional longboard deck which is mounted to the battery-pack body. The four Hover Engines are spread out a little wider to add stability, but they are now attached to the main body via skateboard trucks. They were pretty much locked-off when I got to try it, to make it most stable for a first-timer, but it's those trucks that would tilt the Hover Engines and actually allow you to steer, accelerate, and brake.

Basically, it creates little electromagnetic waves and you get to surf them. Which is awesome.

Note that neither copper nor aluminum are "magnetic." They are, however, conductive. The Hover Engines on the board create a magnetic field, and when that field interacts with a conductive surface it creates small closed loops of electricity called "eddy currents." The eddy creates a secondary magnetic field within the conductive surface, and because the two fields are essentially mirror images of each other, they repel each other. Lift is generated—and motion, if it's angled properly. Basically, it creates little electromagnetic waves and you get to surf them. Which is awesome.

I got to see it working on a smaller scale with Arx Pax's developer hardware, known as the Whitebox+. As you might guess, the Whitebox+ is, well, a white box. It's 10 x 10 inches across the top and 5 inches deep. It uses the same technology as the larger board, but everything's shrunk down to a smaller size so developers can test their tweaks without risking injury. It has four miniature Hover Engines on the bottom, and you can control it with a standard dual-joystick radio control. As the engines tilt, the box scoots off in the direction they're leaning. It felt much like flying your standard quad-copter.

The point was further driven home when I tried another developer device, the Pika. It's just a single Whitebox-sized Hover Engine set into a 3D printed housing so you can hold in your hand. When you tilt it in different directions over the floor, you and really feel it push against you. It offered much better lateral thrust than the dumb electric leaf-blower stunt I tried.

It may look like the Hendo 2.0 doesn't float as high as the Hendo 1.0 did, but that's not exactly true. New on the Hendo 2.0, the Hover Engines each reside in their own little housings. This protects each engine from bumps and significantly reduces the noise level (the 1.0 had a deafening shriek). The housings extend below the pods a little bit, which make it look like it's not hovering as high.

Electric Slide

But as cool as the hoverboard is (and it is), what Arx Pax is really selling here is the Hover Engine. It's something the company thinks would be especially adept at transporting goods and humans. Specifically, its taking aim at traditional maglev systems, which often require a powered track. Since Arx Pax's Magnetic Field Architecture system requires only a passive conductive system, it may have lower power needs. The MFA system also has the advantage of being omnidirectional in its propulsion, so it could not only carry cars along a track, but it could theoretically leave the track once it reached its destination terminal, and then carry riders off to their specific destination, self-driving car style. Of course, that would only work over conductive surfaces, and U.S. roads currently aren't equipped for the job.

The place we're most likely to see this technology applied is in a system like the proposed Hyperloop, and it shouldn't surprise you that Arx Pax is courting Hyperloop designers hard.

In January, its co-founder and CEO Greg Henderson sent out an open letter to the Hyperloop community extolling the virtues of MFA to participants in Texas A&M's Hyperloop pod design competition. The company even built its own pod for the competition to demonstrate its unique capabilities. Arx Pax is reportedly in talks with most of the winners, so we may well see a number of the Hover Engines in action in this summer's upcoming Hyperloop pod race in Hawthorne, CA. Arx Pax is selling its Hover Engine kits for $20,000 each. That's a significant chunk of change, but Henderson says they're still having to hustle to keep up with demand.

I assumed Henderson was merely pitching Magnetic Field Architecture as a means of levitation, but then the pod would require an additional method of propulsion to reach the high speeds (over 700 mph) that Elon Musk and others have quoted. To my surprise, he said he thinks the MFA system would be enough to suppose both levitation and propulsion. "To date we have modeled speeds up to 500 mph with some very promising results," Henderson told me. "I predict that before the Hyperloop is built, we will have technology limited more by time and the human body's tolerance of G-forces than in the speed of our propulsion systems."

Other places we might see this technology? Surprisingly, Arx Pax is looking at some biotech applications. Lots of animals use magnetic fields to aid in navigation. One of those animals is the mosquito. The company is exploring the possibility that its technology could be a chemical-free way of mitigating the number of mosquitoes in a certain area.

As for the hoverboards? Well, ten lucky, well-heeled Kickstarter backers are each receiving their own Hendo 2.0, having spent over $10,000 each in the crowdfunding campaign. And of course Arx Pax will keep a few on hand for demonstrations, but these will continue to be very rare beasts. Maybe someday we'll see lavish, all-copper skate parks emerge where kids can rent these boards and experience this incredible gliding sensation. For now, though, it's a spoonful of sugar to get us talking about hover technology, which isn't such a bitter pill to swallow anyway.

Brent Rose is a freelance writer, producer, and regular WIRED contributor. He is currently traveling the U.S. living in a high tech van, looking for stories to tell. Follow his adventures on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and ConnectedStates.com