The Hydroflyer handlebar shall lead to more control and faster speeds. The product from the company Unifoil out of South Africa wants to open pre-orders at May 2nd 2021. Price is supposed to be 14,000 USD.
Carbon fibre body with a runt time of 2 hours and a maximum speed of 35 mph or 56 km/h. Charging time 120 minutes. It is supposed to fly from 4 knots or 7.4 km/h.
Sounds interesting but you did not mention most critical - the size and weight. This thing looks really huge, long, with a lot of volume. The huge control bar must add extra 15 kg as well? 75kg foil that won’t fit any car? I have my doubts. For me most critical is having a small and lightweight efoil that fits in the car.
Today we are meeting a team from Hydroflyer who created a cross between a hover-board, a jet-ski, and a surfboard. But how does it work? Is it an efoil with handlebar? An electric jetski? Is it just for beginners or real fun for pro riders who want to jump high and ride waves? According to Jerry and Tobi, the HydroFlyer eFoil is the most advanced personal watercraft ever created. Lets check it out in detail.
I post here an update for your readers so they have the latest info.
We have gone away from the soft leading edge Safety Foil. We have found that the handlebars are so safe that this product was superfluous.
Steering becomes much easier when you get good and can ride with the mast track all the way back + use a larger SHIM. I prefer 1.5 degree’s myself and it makes a massive difference + your posture improves when you do either or both of the things above as the bow comes up and you can ride with a straight back. Recovery from hard turns, or waves also gets much better when you bring the nose up.
For the throttle we switched from bluetooth to wifi so our throttle does not lose signal when you bury the board underwater. It made a huge difference. We have not released to the market a handheld throttle that you can hold and ride surf style with the handlebars removed. We found that no one really wanted this compromise as you have so much control with the handlebars there is no need to switch them out.
Battery charging time for a fully depleted battery is exactly 2 hours.
Weight of a Hydroflyer with battery has come out at 49kg, (the battery alone is 15 kg) so overall heavier than we projected it to be. This will get lighter as we optimise the construction process.
We agree with the last line of your review, “The Hydroflyer is not an eFoil” because we introduced a yacht style hull which brings much better safety and performance to the market. Recent releases by Flite, Aero, Sifly and Waydoo are efoils with handlebars - quite different craft.