Dubai Police hoverbike crashes during testing

Dubai Police hoverbike crashes while testing, pilot survives

You certainly don’t want to mess with Dubai Police. Over the past couple of years, they’ve made headlines for employing exotic vehicles in their fleet. Many have likely seen photos of their Bugatti Veyron and Lamborghini Aventador police cars, and Mercedes-AMG G63 patrol vehicles. They even have Kawasaki Ninja H2 and Yamaha R1 highway patrol bikes.

Perhaps their most unusual acquisition was a fleet of hoverbikes. Announced back in 2017, the bikes are S3 Hoverbikes built by California-based startup, Hoversurf.

They are electrically powered and capable of vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL). The Dubai Police have contracted the company to provide them with fleet of hoverbikes, as well as train their patrolmen to handle the vehicles.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be going so well. A video has recently surfaced on the internet of hoverbike training going wrong.

During a test flight, the pilot seems to take-off quite rapidly and struggles to control the vehicle as it hovers several meters off the ground. After a few moments, it falls back down to the ground and splits in two.  Thankfully, the pilot seems to have survived with little injury. The hoverbike, however, is in pieces.

Hoversurf S3 Hoverbike is built on a carbon-fiber frame. It uses four 33-kilowatt motors spinning carbon fiber propellers to keep it off the ground. A 12.3-kilowatt-hour lithium-manganese-nickel battery allows it to stay airborne for up to 25 minutes. Hoversurf says it can fly up to 90 km/h at altitudes of up to five meters. The Hoverbike reportedly costs UK£150,000 (PhP9,5M). Though for a police force that can afford Lamborghinis, Ferraris, McLarens, and Kawasaki H2s, that’s probably not such a big loss. What’s more important is that the pilot survived.