The flying surfboard Waydoo Flyer got a lot of attention at CES 2020 in Las Vegas. Why? Well they were the only electric surfboard manufacturer here in Las Vegas who was exhibiting.
Most electric hydrofoil and electric surfboard manufacturers exhibit at water sport shows such like boot in Dusseldorf as you can see in our event calendar. Waydoo from China which seems to have the drone manufacturer DJI as an investor (they call it business partner) did exhibit already 2019 at CES. See our 2019 Waydoo Flyer article. Waydoo was back in Vegas this year and since many people are not yet familiar with eFoils, they got a lot of attention from press.
So what was new since we met the Waydoo team last year in Vegas. CEO Dennis was not present and their former marketing contact has left the company so we met a new team. They also changed their website from waydoo.io to waydootech.com
While the Waydoo Flyer, they call it flying surfboard, last year looked pretty much like a prototype (which it was) the boards this year looked better and Waydoo claims that they did start to ship to customers in small volumes. They want to ramp up the numbers in 2020. The quality is not comparable to what we know from Lift Foils and Fliteboard, but Waydoo wants to offer their flying surfboard for a much cheaper price. They were showing 2 models this year. The Waydoo Flyer and the Waydoo Flyer One.
The Waydoo Flyer is their flagship carbon fibre e-foil which is selling at 6,495 US dollars excluding shipping and tax while the Flyer One board is not carbon fibre (we did not understand what the material is due to language barriers) and does have a different battery. It sells for around 4,500 USD excluding shipping and tax, if we understood correctly.
Both models have a lithium ion battery, but while the Waydoo Flyer has a battery hatch with a lid as we know it from the eFoil, the Flyer One housed the battery directly in the hull as you can see in the pictures below.
We couldn’t make any detailed pictures of the Flyer One battery as it only was a prototype (the Flyer One is not yet listed on their website). We were however surprised about the high amount of cables which are connected to the Flyer battery. The picture below is showing the cables, but the team was again not able to explain what exactly the functionality is. It seems to be quite a few connectors.
The standard remote control looked very much like the one from last year and is showing the battery charge with 5 LEDs and the speed with 5 LEDs. The PLUS and MINUS buttons let you change the 5 speed modes. The form factor looks very similar to Lift Foils, but without LCD display. They had a second remote control which looked more like the remote from Fliteboard. It was smaller and had a color display. They asked me which one I would prefer which gave me the feeling that they are copying other ideas and try to validate which one they should go for.
Flying surfboard Waydoo Flyer
The Waydoo Flyer has a weight of 48 lbs or 22 kg without battery. The battery is probably another 13 kg which would make it 35 kg in total. The dimensions are 66″ x 28″ x 39 ” or 169 cm x 71 cm x 99 cm. The maximum speed is 28 mph or 45 km/h according to Waydoo. They claim a charging time of 2 hours and that the battery is IP67 waterproof. They claim a riding time of 75 – 120 minutes and a range of up to 35 miles or 56 km.
Waydoo Flyer One
As mentioned above this board seems to be a concept and is not listed on the Waydoo website yet. According to the data sheet from CES it has a weight of 37 lbs or 17 kg plus battery and a dimension of 66″ x 28″ x 41″ or 169 cm x 71 cm x 104 cm. All other specs seems to be similar, but are not published yet.
We had a lot of technical questions to the Waydoo team which they were unfortunately not able to answer due to lack of knowledge and language barriers. I guess they did not expect that someone with experience would challenge them on their product, but just focused on main stream consumer electronic trade show visitors. This was unfortunate and a little bit disappointing. Waydoo provides one-year factory warranty which covers all factory defect and product instructions
