Mercedes to transform cars into roving parking-space finders

Bloomberg

To help end the blind search for a parking gap in crowded city streets, Mercedes-Benz cars will start giving each other a headsup when a space
is free.
Drivers often pass by free spaces when they’re not looking to park and that information will be noted by the car and uploaded to help others, under a pilot project in Stuttgart, Germany, between Mercedes and parts supplier Robert Bosch GmbH, the two companies said in a statement. Several carmakers are pursuing ways to reduce the time and stress needed to find parking, which is also a burden on cities as the search adds to traffic congestion and pollution from the vehicles making loops to scan for an available spot. BMW’s ParkNow service allows drivers to pre-book spaces in parking garages as well as pay for roadside spots via an App, while Siemens AG last year outlined a system using radar mounted on street lamps to provide information about open spots.
The Stuttgart test takes advantage of the Mercedes E-Class sedan’s ultra-sound sensors, which can identify parking spots big enough for the vehicle. The cars in the pilot will collect data about free spaces as they drive past at speeds as fast as 55 kilometers (34 miles) per hour.
In a first step, the system will then share information about the probability of finding a space in a particular street. The second phase of the project targets sharing real-time information on the exact location and size of spots to create a digital parking map that can be displayed in the car, Mercedes said.
“Nearly all of our Mercedes-Benz cars are connected,” Sajjad Kahn, Mercedes’ head of digital vehicle and mobility, said in the statement. “If a car then also has the right sensors, it’s logical to try and use the data generated while driving past to help speed up the search for a parking spot.”