Genesis Celebrates Arrival In China With Over 3000 Drones; Claims New World Record

Rather than featuring fireworks to celebrate its official arrival in China, Hyundai subsidiary Genesis had decided to go for something more spectacular: a fully controllable light show in the sky. The Korean luxury car brand lit up the Shanghai skyline with a whopping 3,281 aerial drones on 29 March, breaking the current Guinness World Record for “The Most Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) airborne simultaneously.”

The drone-based light show demonstrated an impressive display of formations, including a rendition of Genesis’ logo, 3D-like wireframes of its G80 and GV80 car models, greetings, and much more. You can view highlights of the showcase in the video embedded below.

Prior to this, the record holder for the title was China’s own Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology, which used 3,050 drones last year on 20 September. According to Guinness, Russian UAV manufacturer Geoscan and US chipmaker Intel preceded that record with a total of 2,200 and 2,066 units respectively.

Speaking of the latter, Intel opened for the Winter Olympics with a showcase of 1,218 drones back in 2018, where it claimed the same Guinness World Record at that time. The company also provided an aerial light show in Malaysia for last year’s New Year Eve celebrations at Dataran Merdeka, although only approximately 300 drones were used.

Despite the smaller number used for the local celebration, the cost for the showcase itself was recorded to top at least US$ 225K (~RM 919,710). With that in mind, one could only imagine the amount of money spent for the aforementioned demonstrations that feature even more drones – especially by Genesis.

AirAsia Digital Partners With The Government To Explore Delivery Using Drones

Will we see drone deliveries in Malaysia soon? Teleport, AirAsia Digital’s logistics venture, just announced a collaboration with the government’s Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) to launch the Urban Drone Delivery Sandbox and explore the long-term viability of an urban drone delivery service.

The pilot project for automated drone delivery from AirAsia’s e-commerce platforms including airasia Shop is set to be executed through a 6-month phased approach at a government test site in Cyberjaya. The service is currently in a testing stage with two local drone operators, VStream Revolution Sdn Bhd and Meraque Services Sdn Bhd.

The project’s first phase in Cyberjaya will assess the capability, experience, approval process, deployment readiness and service expansion of the drone operators. Upon successful trials, the service will be deployed and might be expanded beyond the sandbox environment.

Responding to the partnership, Khairy Jamaluddin, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, said, “The drone delivery of goods can be expanded and scaled up beyond e-commerce, such as delivery of essential or medical supplies to areas that are rural, remote, or affected by natural disasters.”

AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes said that drone delivery would enable the company to keep up with the increasing demand for e-commerce and remain agile in a shifting economic landscape.