A Japanese company has made this rather delectable hoverbike

There are many modes of transport that offer varying degrees of satisfaction – speedboat across the Thames springs to mind – but few, one suspects, reach the heights of joy a fully-fledged hoverbike offers.

Welcome to the XTurismo: a limited-edition, actual hoverbike built by a Japanese drone company that aims to become a new “icon of air mobility”. Indeed, its creator – ALI Technologies – expects this magnificent creation to be deployed “in a wide range of fields such as moving to places where infrastructure is incompletely developed”.

So, welcome again, to your new off-road adventure toy. It’s 3.7m long, 2.4m wide and 1.5m high, which means nothing unless you have some context. A Fiat 500 for example, is 3.5m long, 1.6m wide and 1.5m high.

ALI only mentions that the XTurismo is powered by an internal combustion engine and electric power, and weighs somewhere in the region of 300kg. It can take a “payload” of 100kg and has a “cruising time” of between 30 and 40 minutes.

The price? 77,700,000 yen, which equates to just under £496k. So half a million for a hybrid hoverbike that looks like something director Katsuhiro Otomo might have used had he made Akira today? Just tell us where to sign.