Ascendance Passes “USD2 Billion Pre-Orders for eVTOL ATEA, Eyes First Trial Flights For 2025”

18 months after rais­ing over USD50 mil­lion via a Series A invest­ment Fund­ing Round, eVTOL devel­op­er, France-based Ascen­dance, has reached USD2 bil­lion in pre-orders for its hybrid-elec­tric pow­ered ‘Atea’ Air­craft, reports a press release. 

Orders have come from heli­copter lessors and oper­a­tors across Europe, the USA and Asia. The com­pa­ny says it plans to begin test flights of the air­craft next year. 

Found­ed in 2018 by four ex-Air­bus engi­neers who all worked on the E‑Fan project, the com­pa­ny is cre­at­ing two mar­ket-ready inno­va­tions to decar­bonise exist­ing and future air trav­el for pas­sen­ger, med­ical and car­go trans­porta­tion.

Ster­na: A Patent­ed Mod­u­lar Hybrid Elec­tric Propul­sion Sys­tem

Com­pat­i­ble with sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuels (SAF) and hydro­gen, it can be fit­ted into new or con­ven­tion­al air­craft which opens up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a next gen­er­a­tion of avi­a­tion with a sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced envi­ron­men­tal foot­print and  reduc­ing emis­sions by up to 50 per­cent.

Atea, The eVTOL Air­craft 

This will be a qui­et, low-car­bon alter­na­tive to heli­copters, pro­vid­ing an ide­al response to the need for decen­tralised and region­al point-to-point avi­a­tion. It is soon to be the first air­craft pow­ered by Ster­na.

Jean-Christophe Lam­bert, co-Founder and CEO of Ascen­dance, com­ment­ed,  “The avi­a­tion sec­tor first explored all-elec­tric options for decar­bon­i­sa­tion, but prob­lems of range and infra­struc­ture, name­ly heavy bat­tery com­po­nents, inte­gra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties and long recharge time, have led a grow­ing num­ber to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er hybrid options. For Ascen­dance, hybrid-elec­tric was a delib­er­ate deci­sion from day one.”

He con­tin­ued, “Based on a propul­sion archi­tec­ture com­bin­ing elec­tric­i­ty and com­bus­tion pow­er, hybrid solu­tions can reduce fuel con­sump­tion by up to 50 per­cent, where they can be used with­out major mod­i­fi­ca­tions to exist­ing engines and infra­struc­ture.” Adding, “Today, we sug­gest there are 25,000 air­craft fly­ing that could ben­e­fit from a retro­fit.”

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Recent reports from the Inter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port Asso­ciation (IATA) and the Avi­a­tion Impact Accelerator have both high­light­ed the need for more invest­ment and inno­va­tion in hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems, empha­sis­ing the impor­tance of these solu­tions in reach­ing net-zero.

Ascen­dance has formed tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial part­ner­ships with many of the lead­ing play­ers, as well as par­tic­i­pat­ing in Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al talks to evolve reg­u­la­tions and meet sig­nif­i­cant goals.

The release states, “Part­ner­ships formed dur­ing 2023 and 2024 include three impor­tant British sup­pli­ers in charge of major sys­tems and com­po­nents of the air­craft. On the com­mer­cial side, Ascen­dance has announced a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Daher to study the hybridi­s­a­tion of its air­craft port­fo­lio, and is col­lab­o­rat­ing with a famous French drone man­u­fac­tur­er on a hybridi­s­a­tion, in order to improve the company’s glob­al flight per­for­mance. Ascen­dance has also recent­ly joined the Euro­pean Regions Air­line Asso­ci­a­tion.”

Jean-Christophe point­ed out, “Major play­ers like Air­bus, Boe­ing, Comac and their respec­tive ecosys­tems are work­ing hard to achieve the Holy Grail of the net zero air­craft. Yet, con­strained by a heavy lega­cy, these play­ers are strug­gling to engage in dis­rup­tive inno­va­tions. With­out allow­ing dis­rup­tion from new tech­nolo­gies, and col­lab­o­rat­ing at an indus­try-lev­el, net-zero air trav­el will not be pos­si­ble.”

Jean-Christophe Lam­bert

He con­clud­ed, “Next year marks 25 years to 2050. If the indus­try is going to meet its ambi­tious, but achiev­able net zero tar­get, more invest­ment is required.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ascendance-ft.com

(Top image: Ascen­dance)

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