Neom, the regional development project in northwestern Saudi Arabia, intends to launch urban air mobility services by 2024. The government-backed initiative to build a community based on new sustainable technology announced a joint venture with Volocopter and said that it will buy 15 of its eVTOL aircraft. The provisional order covers 10 of the two-seat VoloCity vehicles and five of the fully autonomous VoloDrone cargo-carrying model.
Under the agreement signed on December 1, the partners will develop what they called a public vertical mobility system in Neom on the country’s Red Sea coast. This will include a new “industrial city” called Oxagon and a residential community called The Line that will extend for just over 100 miles and have a population of one million people. Developers claim the new communities will be powered entirely from renewable energy sources with, “zero cars, zero streets, and zero carbon emissions.”
