With this evaluation for its turboprop concept, Embraer is scratching at an entirely new strategic consideration for a multi-decade aircraft program. While large aircraft design has relied on the same fundamental type of fuel, coupled with successive generations of ever-improving engines, Embraer views its new 90-seater airframe as propulsion agnostic and a halfway step toward hydrogen. Positioning the engines on the rear of the aircraft might not produce the single most optimized design in 2027, but, in Embraer’s view, that deliberate non-optimization allows room for future evolution and growth.
