A lot has changed over the past 50 years. But parking? It’s still the same. Drivers head into cities, hunt for open spots and hope for the best – but nearly 60 percent end up heading home because they can’t find a space. Plus, all that hunting around generates approximately 20 percent of a vehicle’s lifetime emissions.
Nationally, drivers waste more than 70 million hours each year looking for open spots. But what if your car could help you find and book an open spot in real-time?
Researchers at Ford are reimagining mobility solutions for the future, working to make convenient, stress-free parking a reality using existing vehicle technology. For example:
Its Parking Spotter project uses sensors to gather information and store it in a cloud database, which other drivers can access
Its Remote Repositioning experiment uses on-vehicle cameras and live streaming to allow drivers to control vehicles from miles away, like a real-life video game
Its Painless Parking project saves drivers from ticket woes by helping them pay for meters through a mobile phone.
With smarter parking, drivers can spend less time hunting for spots, waste less energy, cut down on emissions and help fight congestion around the world.
Source: Ford Motor Company
