A hovercart simply consists of a wooden box supported by four or more hoverpods. In this sense it is simply a levitating version of a horse and buggy. The main advantage of a hovercart over a wheeled vehicle is that a hovercart can be drawn with a fraction of the force. Most hovercarts are drawn by only a single animal, and in many cases it is only modestly encumbered by the load; on level ground, a hovercart can go as fast as the running speed of the animal that pulls it.
The main drawback of the hovercart is that, while its hoverpods are able to exert a vertical force to support its weight, it lacks any mechanism to exert a horizontal force. It is for this reason that a hovercart must be pulled by an external propulsion source. In addition, most hovercarts lack a mechanism to hold a steady course, and must rely on their draft animals for steering as well as propulsion. Hovercarts are difficult to control when slowing down, with a strong tendency to sideslip. To deal with this, they are typically equipped with a drag anchor that drops to the ground when the vehicle needs to stop in a hurry.
The main advantage of hovercarts is their low cost. Hoverpods are cheaper to produce than hoverkeels, so the lack of steering and propulsion makes hovercarts easier to produce than hoverships. The simplicity of their frame is also an advantage, as is their relative lack of mechanical parts. The only significant mechanical part on a hovercart is the balancer box, which controls the relative altitude of its hoverpods. This allows the vehicle to be raised and lowered with a single ratchet mechanism rather than requiring a separate ratchet for each hoverpod.
An important secondary advantage of hovercarts is that they are easy to maneuver in tight spaces an over uneven terrain. Hoverships are limited in that they cannot scale steep grades in low wind; a hovercart, in contrast, is limited only by what its draft animal can pull at full exertion. Hoverships also need to tack if faced with a headwind, which may be impossible if the ship is maneuvering on a city street. A hovercart does not need to lower its sailfin to pass under a bridge, nor does it need to retract its outriggers to go down a narrow alley or trail. Where conduit teleporters are available, hovercarts become the dominant form of transportation for the simple reason that they can fit most easily through a teleport gate.
Hoverrickshaws are small, light hovercarts designed to be pulled by hand. The main reason for their existence is that, for short trips inside cities where only passengers need to be carried, hitching an actual draft animal to the cart provides far more power than is actually needed. Since the cart must have a driver regardless of its source of power, it is consequently more economical to have the driver also serve as a source of propulsion. In order to minimize the amount of work the driver has to do, many hoverrickshaws are surrounded by force bubbles, reducing aerodynamic drag to less than that of the driver, hence it is not much work to pull the cart. More importantly, hoverrickshaw drivers almost always wear hoverskates, thus allowing them to move much faster than their passengers could on foot. Thus, unlike conventional rickshaws, which do little more than transfer the burden of walking from the passenger to the driver, hoverrickshaws are an extremely efficient form of transportation.