Austrian startup FlyNow is opening manufacturing facilities in Saudi Arabia, after the announcement that "thousands" of its coaxial twin-rotor helicopters will transport visitors at the upcoming World Expo in Riyadh.
Ah, Saudi Arabia. Locked in a neck-and neck battle with Dubai for the title of ultimate early adopter of bleeding-edge technologies. Both stand ever ready to splash bulk cash and take a punt on futuristic ideas, the Saudis currently squeaking ahead with towering, hundred-mile-long skyscrapers slicing through the desert, ill-fated Hyperloop projects, a cliff-hanging soccer stadium and a colossal cuboid skyscraper big enough to fit 20 Empire State Buildings indoors.
Dubai can hold its head up high though, with diving pools so huge they have their own sunken cities built in, dangerously unstable flying police motorcycles, a jet suit grand prix race, the world's tallest building (for now), and flying jetpack firefighters that offer the perfect solution for fires within squirting distance of a large body of water.
In a LinkedIn post today, Saudi Arabia Holding Co. CEO Mohammed AlQahtani announced the Kingdom's latest coup: a fleet of miniature electric helicopters to ferry visitors around the International Expo site in Riyadh in 2030.
These relatively low-cost, single- and double-seat heli-pods promise a battery range up to 50 km (31 miles), which will be plenty for a relatively small site. The two-seat version will lift up to 200 kg (441 lb) of humanity. They'll be unlikely to get anywhere near their top speed of 130 km/h (81 mph) if they're restricted to flying around the Expo zone.
The airframe does indeed embody simplicity; a simple pod with a coaxially stacked pair of top rotors designed to counter-rotate and balance out each other's torque reactions, removing the need for a traditional tail rotor. The whole thing weighs just 210 kg (463 lb) without anyone on board in a single-seat format, and its relatively short rotors promise a noise signature under 55 dB at 150 m (490 ft) altitude, which is softer than "quiet conversation" on a noise scale chart.
The layout allows this aircraft to fly as a helicopter under existing regulations, as opposed to requiring special regulatory attention like some other multirotor eVTOL aircraft might.
FlyNow has six years before it needs to be in high-volume production to put "thousands" of these things into service at the Expo – but it's still got its work cut out; when we first encountered the FlyNow machine in February, the company had been conducting "ground tests" on a proof of concept model, but there doesn't seem to be any indication that the machine has flown at this stage.
So there's a way to go yet, even once the promised Saudi regional office and assembly line are put in place. We're certainly interested in how this kind of thing will work at scale, particularly with "thousands" planned for Expo service within a presumably rather tight bit of airspace.
Certainly, they'll require autonomous fleet control, since there don't appear to be controls in the cabin, and you wouldn't want to let thousands of international tourists loose in them at a time if there were.
The aircraft appear to have a fairly compact ground footprint, but you're certainly still talking at least the size of a car parking spot to charge one up, not to mention a decent exclusion area for takeoff and landing, so thousands of these things will require a lot of ground space. On the other hand, Riyadh is a relatively small city, just a few miles across, with abundant red sand desert plains stretching for miles in all directions, so the space is there, if they can get the chargers wired up ...
But we're talking practicalities here, and we doubt there's any need. If there are indeed "thousands" of FlyNow electric helipods ferrying people around at the 2030 Riyadh Expo, please track me down in whatever underground bunker I'm rocking back and forth in, and let me know, so I can take a Hyperloop to a restaurant in that hundred-mile-long skyscraper and eat a freshly-cooked hat.
Sources: FlyNow, Saudi Arabia Holding Co via UAM News
