ATEA is a revolutionary hybrid electric aircraft designed by Ancestry Flight Technologies, a French startup founded in 2018 by the engineers of the Airbus E-Fan project. Thanks to the collaboration with Dassault Systèmes and an investment of 34 million euros, the ATEA prototype is ready to take to the skies as early as 2024.
It is an eVTOL (electric Vertical Take Off and Landing). You know what it is, right? We talk about it often. These are vertical take-off and landing electric aircraft. This one in particular is equipped with 8 rotors integrated into the 4 wings, which allow it to reach a cruising speed of 200 km/h and a range of 400 km.
Hybrid technology for the future of aviation
The French startup is betting everything on hybrid technology, combining electric energy from batteries with sustainable fuels to reduce CO2 emissions from air transport. Its STERNA modular hybrid propulsion system allows the eVTOL to use different energy sources based on flight needs.
The ATEA aircraft makes the most of this technology, cutting emissions by 80% compared to a traditional helicopter and reducing the noise impact by 75%.
Design and prototyping
To turn ATEA into reality, Ascendance Flight Technologies relied on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform of Dassault Systèmes, which made it possible to manage design, development and prototyping in the cloud in an integrated way. It is the same platform, moreover, which allows the creation of the “virtual twins” of a city, to test the solutions in advance.
Thanks to the investments obtained, the first eVTOL prototype, already presented at the 2023 Paris Air Show, will be in flight in 2024 to obtain the certifications necessary for production, scheduled for just three years later, in 2027.
Hybrid EVTOL, a step towards zero-emission aviation
The fully electric plane is still a mirage, but Ascendance Flight Technologies' hybrid technology represents a concrete step towards the decarbonization of air transport.
Today's innovation is tomorrow's solution. With perseverance and ingenuity, a zero-emissions future is possible. And ATEA is confirmation of this.
