How ATEA, our hybrid VTOL, will be used?
Atea is an innovative aircraft meant to reduce the carbon footprint of the helicopter market and provide a sustainable and practical answer to link some destinations that are still hard to reach today. But how do we plan to do that?
Why did we design Atea?
Actually Atea is one key step in our entire roadmap to make aviation more sustainable. We want to develop the technologies that’ll make aviation more sustainable in the future, we want to start now and Atea is a perfect flagship for our hybrid-electric technology called Sterna!
Atea is an answer to start reducing carbon emissions today. With Atea, we are targeting the helicopter market where we can have a positive impact by reducing carbon emissions by up to 80% and reduce the noise by 4 compared to traditional helicopters.
Thanks to our hybrid propulsion system, Atea is uniquely positioned on longer, regional journeys. Journeys where sometimes no other satisfying solutions exist today to do the trip quickly and efficiently.
In a nutshell, with Atea we are proposing a low-carbon, low-noise alternative to helicopters and a first step towards a sustainable, decentralized aviation for hard-to-reach places.
What are the missions Atea is capable of?
Atea is positioned on 3 main segments:
- Metropolitan trips between 20 and 200km, missions that are usually performed by helicopters where our eVTOL will provide an alternative to reduce CO2 emissions, cost and noise
- Regional link between places that are not well-connected today up to 400km. This is what Decentralized Aviation will look like in the future. There’s a lot of places today in need for better connections, due to natural obstacles like mountains or body of water but also due to the lack of infrastructures like highways, railway etc.
- City-to-City pairing on a regional scale. In Europe we have a really well-developed Railway system connecting major cities to one another but that’s not the case everywhere and while the major cities are well-connected, there are still a major need for quick, clean and efficient transportations outside of those few megacities.
These are the kind of trips that you will be able to perform with Atea.
Why?
- Because we have the technology that will allow to decarbonize the helicopter market starting to save tons of CO2 right now
- Because Atea can fulfill many missions useful for the public like emergency and medical services or surveillance
- Because there are a lot of places in needs for more efficient transportation system with only light requirements on the infrastructure side
How can Atea be integrated into the existing mobility service ecosystem?
Of course, as always in aviation, safety is at the very heart of everything we do and regulation plays a key part in ensuring that eVTOLs will fly safely.
The aircraft itself is certified meaning that every detail of its design is scrutinized by an independent authority to ensure that the airplane is the safest one possible.
We are also working with regulators on the Operational regulations that will rule how eVTOLs will actually fly. Similar to traffic regulations, but up in the air.
And all the required regulations are starting to be there! There has been a tremendous amount of work to ensure that the regulations will support the emergence of this market and not slow it down and we’re really happy about it!
