From 40 Minutes to 6 Hours: It's the Airframe, Not the Battery
The same 5 kg aircraft on the same 2 kg pack needs 512 W to hover for 41 minutes as a multirotor, or 128 W to cruise for 164 minutes and 197 km as a fixed wing — and that range is independent of cruise speed. A VTOL's cost is not the energy burned in transition (2.4%) but that it carries both a rotor system and a wing, worth about a quarter of the range; Taiwan builds something at every rung from 40-minute electric multirotors to a 6-hour piston helicopter.