NASA's experimental plane wing has 18 propellers

NASA has designed an experimental plane wing with 18 propellers attached to it, in a bid to create a more efficient, electric-powered aircraft.
The 18 propellers sit atop the 31-foot wingspan, and work together to lift and propel the plane forward. They are powered by lithium iron phosphate batteries.
The wings are part of NASA's Leading Edge Asynchronous Propellers Technology (LEAPTech) project.
LEAPTech is a key element of NASA's plan to help a significant portion of the aircraft industry transition to electrical propulsion within the next decade.
NASA will test the experimental wing, called the Hybrid-Electric Integrated Systems Testbed (HEIST), by mounting it to a truck and driving it across a dried up lakebed at Edwards Air Force base in California at 112 kph later this year.

The wing has been in development since last year, 'Wired' reported.

The truck experiment is a precursor to a development of a small X-plane demonstrator proposed under NASA's Transformative Aeronautics Concepts programme.
Researchers hope to fly a piloted X-plane within the next couple of years after removing the wings and engines from an Italian-built Tecnam P2006T and replacing them with an improved version of the LEAPTech wing and motors.
Using an existing airframe will allow engineers to easily compare the performance of the X-plane with the original P2006T.
Each motor can be operated independently at different speeds for optimised performance.

Key potential benefits of LEAPTech include decreased reliance on fossil fuels, improved aircraft performance and ride quality, and aircraft noise reduction.