Look! Up in the Dubai sky! It's not a bird or a plane: It's a souped-up police motorcycle! That might sound like the premise of a cheesy action film, but the truth is, what sounds like fiction now could be fact quite soon. Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, owns a flying motorcycle known as a Hoverbike, and if all goes to plan, it will have a special police unit zipping through the air on more of the bikes by next year. Technically known as an "electric vertical take-off and landing" (eVTOL) vehicle, the motorcycle is battery-operated and considered a first-responder unit capable of reaching places that other vehicles can't. The only holdup at present is the limited distance the battery offers, but the manufacturer, the California-based Hoversurf, says it's working to make flight times more in line with police needs, whether through better batteries or improved propulsion systems. For what it's worth, Dubai currently has an exclusive contract with Hoversurf to purchase as many of the bikes as it wants, but that doesn't mean they are off-limits to civilians. As long as you aren't put off by the $150,000 USD price tag and can pass a test to ensure that you can handle the flying machine, then you could soon be taking to the skies on your own superbike.
The dream city of Dubai:
- The Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai contains enough gold leaf decoration to cover the "Mona Lisa" painting 46,265 times.
- The cost of living in Dubai is almost 32 percent lower than in New York City, and residents don't pay income tax.
- Dubai boasts the largest shopping mall in the world, with more than 1,200 shops in its 5,400,000 square feet (502,000 square meters) of space.