Applications: Aviation, Drones, Space

UAS/UAM Segments Highly Coupled by Weight, Specific Application, and Propulsion Type

In today’s UAS/UAM landscape, aircraft below roughly 25 kgs (small UAS) and up through light eVTOL classes are already predominantly battery-native, because electric motors scale efficiently at low mass

Most UAS/UAM missions are power-limited rather than energy-limited (high takeoff power, short duration), aligning well with batteries’ strengths of high power density and instant torque

Battery improvements push the crossover upward where ongoing gains in cell-level specific energy, C-rate capability, thermal management, and cycle life steadily raise the feasible MTOW threshold where batteries outperform hybrids or fuel systems, shifting progressively larger UAS and UAM platforms into the battery-dominant regime.

As battery technology improves, secondary benefits compound with simpler architectures, lower maintenance, easier certification, quieter operation, faster turnaround via high-rate charging. This makes batteries not just viable but structurally preferred across an expanding share of UAS/UAM weight classes.

Source: A review of powering unmanned aerial vehicles by clean and renewable energy technologies

Extracted from the PDF; charts and images may read imperfectly.