Saudi Arabia's Buys electric ship shuttles for NEOM

In my first NEOM Blog, I wrote about the futuristic city called NEOM being built in the Northwest quadrant of Saudi Arabia. Recently, the Saudi's signed an agreement to purchase a fleet of Air Taxis to provide shuttle services for waterways of NEOM.

What did the Saudi's purchase?

They purchased Candela P-12 electric shuttle ships.  Candela bills them as the world's first high-speed and long-range electric shuttle ship. Recall one of the goals of NEOM is 100% renewable energy use.  Don't overlook the Saudi's purchase of 100 Air Taxis From German Startup Lilium in July '24. Many assume their destination is Neom.

What else do we know about the electric shuttle ship?

• Candela is a Swedish boat manufacturer
• The P-12 models are electric hydrofoil ships
• Which can cruise at speeds of 16 knots
• P-12 deliveries are expected to start to arrive in 2025 and have all of them delivered by NEOM full launch in 2039

Artist renderings of the Candela P-12's

Top Competition to Candela?

• Lux 
• Lumen

Will electric shuttle ships accept Crypto payments?

I was not able to find anything leading me to think they have thought through accepting Crypto. However, there is still time for them to lay the groundwork for such forward thinking and roll that payment option out at the same time or a phase approach which include Crypto payments.

Need to get up to snuff quickly on eVTOL / Air Taxi's? Here are my older posts:

• eVTOL / Air Taxi Updates  - July 2024

• FAA Prepares US For Flying Taxi Operations By 2028 Aug 2023
• Switchblade - sky vehicle Aug 2022
• US Flying Car Era Begins July 2022
• Worlds First Vertiport opens in UK May 2022
• Passenger Drone Bus & Taxi Services June 2021
• Flying Taxi's coming to Orlando, FL Nov 2020

Summary 

The futuristic linear city of NEOM needs an electric shuttle ship and Candela fits that quite well. Now that the NEOM vision is taking more shape are you up for visiting? If yes, are you planning on water travels on the electric hydrofoil ships? I would say that would be a must!