Airbus, alongside partners from across the European Union, the UK and the US, has announced its aim to pioneer a hybrid-electric non-propulsive energy architecture for the next generation of commercial aircraft with LEIA – Large Scale Integration Demonstrator of Hybrid Electrical Architecture.
A project supported by the European Union Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking; LEIA is considered to be fundamental to the advancement of high-voltage generation and distribution for electrical aircraft systems for short-to-medium range aircraft.
The project aims to bridge the gap between component-level innovation and aircraft-level maturity, preparing these technologies for future integration and certification in the process.
Karim Mokaddem, Head of Aircraft of Tomorrow Research and Technology at Airbus, said:Our progress in developing hybrid-electric technologies and our move into the LEIA demonstrator marks a pivotal shift in how we design the future of flight.
By moving to integrated, intelligent hybrid-electric architectures, we are actively laying the physical and digital foundation for the next generation of aircraft. This evolution demonstrates that the future of aviation is about more than just new power sources; it is also about the new ecosystems that will manage them.
LEIA aims to build on the completion of the SWITCH project, which focused on hybrid-electric powertrain systems. The project reached a key milestone in July following Collins Aerospace’s completion of integrated laboratory testing, reflecting the result of a collaborative effort by all project partners, including Pratt & Whitney, GKN Aerospace, and MTU Aero Engines.
These subsystems, which operate in tandem with simulated aircraft and engine systems, are now set to transition to the Airbus Sustainable Technology and Engineering Projects (STEP) laboratory in Ottobrun, Germany, where Airbus teams will begin conducting critical aircraft-level integration testing, including design, battery interfacing and energy-management systems.
Airbus is currently leading the integration of a suite of advanced electrical components, including scalable motor/generators, next-generation electronic controllers, power distribution equipment, alongside various other aircraft systems, all of which will be validated through a full testing programme culminating in a ground demonstration by 2027.
Both SWITCH and LEIA projects will build on Airbus’ ongoing collaboration across multiple Clean Aviation projects, which target electrification technologies for regional and short-to-medium range aircraft. Airbus is also collaborating with several partners on the LEIA project, including AVL, Collins Aerospace, the European Aerospace Science Network (EASN), Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Liebherr Aerospace, Lynxeo, the Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR), Safran, SAFT, the University of Warwick, and Wroclaw University of Science and Technology.
