From a time-travelling DeLorean to a future where hovercars are everywhere, the movie Back to the Future is a dream for sci fi-loving petrol heads - but could it be a reality?

Throughout the 80s Marty McFly and Doc enthralled viewers with their modified DeLorean, which took Marty back to 1955 and then to the distant future - 2015.

Dr Rodrigo Martinez Gazoni, MacDiarmid Institute research fellow at the University of Canterbury fact checks the science behind Back to the Future, from flying cars to time travel.

Dr Martinez Gazoni was too young to watch the movie when it first came out, but once he saw the film he couldn't wait for 2015 when we would have flying cars.

"Here we are six years later and I still haven't seen ," he said.

But he believes hovercars could become a reality if we really wanted them.

"I'm very optimistic. I'm absolutely sure that we will be able to do something like that in the next ten years."

But Dr Martinez Gazoni warns they might not be the dream solution to our transport problems.

"The problem will be traffic. Not traffic jams, but traffic itself. It would be really, really dangerous."

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details