Site Selection and Route Planning Study for Manned eVTOL Landing Sites

With the intensification of urbanization exacerbating ground traffic congestion, the development of low-altitude transportation using electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft has emerged as a novel approach to alleviate urban commuting pressure. This study, taking Shenzhen as a case, extracted commuting demands from census data and determined optimal vertiport locations through K-means clustering and Silhouette function evaluation, revealing that establishing 40 vertiports achieves optimal clustering quality. A genetic algorithm-based minimum operational cost model further demonstrated that battery capacity and charging center quantity are negatively correlated with total flight distance and energy consumption. Specifically, increasing battery capacity within a certain range reduces operational costs through mediating variables, while expanding charging center quantity within a defined threshold decreases energy consumption and costs under fixed battery capacity. This research provides quantitative evidence for low-altitude transportation infrastructure planning and aircraft configuration, proving that optimizing battery capacity and charging network density can effectively enhance the operational cost-effectiveness of urban aerial mobility systems.