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Dubai’s RTA Unveils Solar-Powered “RailBus” Transit System
The autonomous vehicle will be built using 3D printing technologies and recyclable materials, and can accommodate up to 40 passengers.
Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has introduced the RailBus project — a high-tech, solar-powered and completely autonomous public transport system. The announcement of the concept, confirmed by Dubai’s government media office, aligns with the Emirate’s Net Zero 2050 strategy.
The RailBus is being championed by the government as a game-changer for urban mobility. The project was reviewed by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, alongside His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai. The review took place at the World Governments Summit, where Dubai’s RTA had its own stand.
The RailBus system is designed with sustainability in mind: Built using 3D printing technologies and recyclable materials, each carriage weighs around 7 tons and accommodates up to 40 passengers. The 11.5-meter-long and 2.65-meter-wide carriages can reach speeds of up to 100 km/h. The system is projected to cut operational costs by 20-30% compared to more conventional public transit types.
Dubai’s government confirmed that the RTA will conduct “technical studies” to determine optimal locations for pilot projects. The initiative follows an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) signed between the RTA and US-based company RAILBUS Inc., which aims to develop the world’s first fully solar-powered public transport network.
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His Excellency Mattar Al Tayer, who briefed Sheikh Mohammed, highlighted the potential of RailBus: “The project reflects RTA’s commitment to fostering public-private partnerships and supporting start-ups in developing next-generation autonomous transport systems. RailBus is solar-powered, highly efficient, and cost-effective, integrating with Dubai’s public transport network. It also enhances first and last-mile connectivity, ensuring safe, smooth, and sustainable travel for residents and visitors in urban areas”.
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UAE-Built Falcon-H1 Arabic Leads LLM Benchmarks
The lean Emirati-built language model beats larger global systems and puts Arabic at the center of training.
Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute has released an Arabic-first large language model that tops global test boards, an uncommon edge for a region long served by English-centric systems.
Falcon-H1 Arabic comes in 3B, 7B and 34B versions. The flagship posts 75.36% accuracy on comprehensive Arabic tasks and ranks first on the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard. It also outperforms Meta’s Llama-70B and Alibaba’s Qwen-72B while using less than half their parameters. The smallest model beats Microsoft’s Phi-4 Mini by ten percentage points on equivalent benchmarks.
Arabic remains hard territory for AI. Flexible word order, dense morphology and constant switching between regional dialects and Modern Standard Arabic leave many global models missing context or tone. Academic research has pointed to a shortage of annotated datasets for dialect and informal speech. The impact shows up in classrooms, call centers and government portals where Arabic chatbots lag their English counterparts.
TII trained Falcon-H1 Arabic on formal writing, dialects and culturally grounded content. Beyond scores, it handles practical use: long conversations, reasoning rather than literal translation, and inputs of up to 192,000 words — enough for medical records or legal filings.
“The aim is innovation that is accessible, relevant, and impactful,” said Faisal Al Bannai, Adviser to the UAE President and Secretary-General of the Advanced Technology Research Council.
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Arabic is spoken by more than 450 million people across over 20 countries, yet has often been treated as a secondary language for foundation models. The UAE move signals a push to flip that logic and build Arabic-native stacks rather than wait for global systems to improve.
Falcon models have led their categories since 2023. With H1 Arabic, TII is offering free access via chat.falconllm.tii.ae for developers, media, healthcare and public-sector users looking to automate in natural Arabic.
As the region continues to invest in sovereign computing and data localization, the addition of Falcon-H1 Arabic adds a powerful tool built for the native language, instead of an afterthought attached to an English-trained system.
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