Ascendance Chooses Safran “to Propel its ATEA VTOL Aircraft”

France-based Ascen­dance announced this week, the com­pa­ny has select­ed ENGINeUS, the first EASA-cer­ti­fied elec­tric motor, devel­oped by Safran Elec­tri­cal & Pow­er, for its pro­to­type hybrid-elec­tric VTOL called ATEA, reports a press release.

The air­craft which fea­tures an inno­v­a­tive propul­sion sys­tem con­sist­ing of eight ver­ti­cal elec­tric motors and two hor­i­zon­tal elec­tric motors, is “a qui­et low-car­bon alter­na­tive to con­ven­tion­al heli­copters, designed to reduce envi­ron­men­tal impact and pave the way for more effi­cient region­al con­nec­tions,” explains the release.

The fly­ing ATEA demon­stra­tor, cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion, will be equipped with two ENGINeUS elec­tric motors, pro­vid­ing hor­i­zon­tal propul­sion and  each devel­op­ing in excess of 100kW. With its pow­er and con­trol elec­tron­ics inte­grat­ed direct­ly into the motor and its opti­mised air cool­ing sys­tem, ENGINeUS is ide­al for ATEA’s require­ments.

Ascen­dance has start­ed its ground test­ing cam­paign at test facil­i­ties in Muret, south of Toulouse, France. The pur­pose is to approve the inte­gra­tion of new tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing Safran’s propul­sion sys­tem into the air­craft’s hybrid elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem, while val­i­dat­ing the per­for­mance.

Jean-Christophe Lam­bert, CEO of Ascen­dance, com­ment­ed, “Safe­ty is cen­tral to our pro­gram, par­tic­u­lar­ly the first of our pilot­ed test flights. This col­lab­o­ra­tion with Safran is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to ben­e­fit from their exper­tise in per­for­mance and safe­ty, as well as the per­for­mance of the motors.”

Agnès Pronost-Gilles, Exec­u­tive VP and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Pow­er Divi­sion, Safran Elec­tri­cal & Pow­er, added, “This announce­ment, which comes after the EASA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our ENGINeUS motor, con­sol­i­dates our posi­tion as a pio­neer in the field of elec­tric propul­sion. It is the result of sev­er­al months of tech­ni­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion between our two com­pa­nies in the Occ­i­tanie French region.” 

The ATEA project was select­ed in 2023 with­in the frame­work of the France 2030 recov­ery plan, as part of the “pro­duce a low-car­bon air­craft” in the pro­gram. As such, Ascen­dance relies on a num­ber of French part­ners for the air­craft’s key sys­tems. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ascendance-ft.com

https://www.safran-group.com

(Images: Ascen­dance Tech­nolo­gies)

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