autoevolution 28 Feb 2021, 16:37 UTC ·
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The new technology is called EAP – that’s short for Electrified Aircraft Propulsion, and it calls for an airplane’s propellers or fans to be driven by electric motors. It is one of NASA’s many aviation research projects currently underway, and it just entered a new stage. 1 photo
Ever since electricity has become an important part of how cars operate on the road, companies and institutions have begun looking into how one could integrate such systems in airplanes. After all, according to World Wild Life, if the aviation industry was its own nation, it would be in the top ten carbon-polluting nations on the planet.
autoevolution 19 Feb 2021, 10:04 UTC ·
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But there’s one thing everybody noticed: all these aircraft look like flying machines coming from the future and have little in common with the typical airplane design everybody knows.
French company Ascendance has designed Atea, a new VTOL based on a project not necessarily new but which is now getting closer to reality with a series of improvements.
First and foremost, as anyone can see in the photos included in the gallery, Atea looks like a plane. So while at first glance it might be hard to create a flying machine that can take off and land vertically, all while using the design of a conventional plane, Ascendance has found a way to make it happen.