“Great Scott!” It’s finally happened the future has caught up with us. Today, October 21, 2015, is Back to the Future Day, the date that Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to in the iconic 1980s movie “Back To The Future II.”

Yep! According to the popular movie’s forecast by now we should have flying cars, hover boards and shoelaces that tie themselves. They did get somethings quite bang on but more on that later.

The Irish connection to the much loved Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd movie is the DeLorean car, produced from 1981 to 1983, just outside Belfast in Dumurry. Yes, that amazing car with doors that open upwards is Irish…but sadly not really a time machine.

Another sad fact is that although the car was made famous by “Back to the Future” by the time the movie was released the car company had gone bankrupt. By the 2011 there were only 80 DeLoreans left.

In 1981, John DeLorean, got £100 million from the UK Government to set up production in Northern Ireland, but after just 21 months, the plant shut having made fewer than 9,000 cars.

To honor Back to the Future Day, and of course in the name of science, some diligent student from Queen’s University School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science have reengineered the DeLorean to run on electricity. Although the car won’t run on trash it will have all the inner-workings of an electric vehicle (EV).

Dr David Laverty the 'Doc Brown' of Queen's Electric DeLorean project told the Belfast Telegraph “In the future, more and more of our energy will come from renewable electricity - whether to power appliances in the home or our means of travel.

“This project was about modifying a car into an electric vehicle, but we wanted to do it in style. The DeLorean was the obvious choice because of its connection with Belfast.”

But now back to what “Back to the Future II” got right. Now on October 21 2015 we actually have:

- Big screen TVs and video conference calls

- News drones (well technically we could)

- Hands-free video games

- 3D movies

- Their clothes…well nearly

- Video glasses.

Related: Movies