News

Dubai Residents Will Soon Travel Door To Door By Flying Car

Aviation firm Aviterra has signed a deal with Dutch company PAL-V to purchase over 100 Liberty flying cars.

Published

2 years ago

March 29, 2024

Nour Nasir

dubai residents will soon travel door to door by flying car

PAL-V

A Dubai-headquartered aviation company has signed an agreement with Dutch firm PAL-V to bring their groundbreaking flying cars to the Middle East.

Aviterra, a manufacturer of aviation and aerospace components, will purchase over 100 Liberty flying cars and directly invest in the European aviation company, they revealed in a recent joint statement.

At $799,000, the two-seat Liberty is a costly vehicle predominantly aimed at high-end, corporate, and government clients and individuals with very deep pockets. Described by PAL-V as a “personal aircraft for daily medium and long-distance commutes,” the Liberty combines a gyroplane and three-wheeled car with collapsable propellers and tail fins stored on the roof.

In car mode, the vehicle can reach 100 kph in under nine seconds and has a top speed of 160 kph. Changing into aircraft modes takes around five minutes, with the helicopter-like blades rising from the roof and the tail fins extending up and out from the rear. Finally, the car’s rear jacks up, and two hatches open to deploy the rear-facing propeller.

pal-v liberty flying car

As an aircraft, the Liberty has a range of between 400 and 500 km and a maximum speed of 180 kph. It can reach an altitude of 11,000 feet and requires a runway (or straight road) of at least 200 meters for both takeoff and landing.

The current batch of Liberty flying cars run on regular gasoline but will eventually be configured as EVs “once batteries get lighter”, according to Robert Dingemanse, CEO and founder of PAL-V.

Also Read: Abu Dhabi To Develop $1 Billion eSports Island Facility

Meanwhile, as both Abu Dhabi and Dubai continue to make strong commitments to air mobility, other companies are also keen to deploy flying cars in the Middle East. Slovakian firm KleinVision, for example, is developing a flying vehicle called the Aircar, powered by a BMW engine.

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority recently signed agreements to use air taxis in the city in the next two years, while Abu Dhabi’s Investment Office has announced plans to introduce an all-electric air taxi fleet by 2026.

News

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

2 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.