The automotive world is a cutthroat place. New technologies pop up all the time, vying for attention and our hard-earned dollars. Some are so good that they eventually become an industry standard, like power windows and keyless entry. Others burst on to the scene with great fanfare, only to seemingly disappear years later.
I’ve covered many technologies in that latter category, from Jeep’s Predator system to Volvo’s creepy heartbeat sensor. But there’s another more recent example that recently popped into my head. What happened to cars that can park themselves?
Just over a decade ago, this was the hottest new feature out. If you were scared of parallel parking, or simply tired of the chore, you could have your car do it for you. Just about every automaker was rushing to fit this tech to their cars. And yet, here we are in 2024, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone mention it in years. What gives?
Park Yourself
The basic technology required for automatic parking is relatively common these days, but was astounding in the late 2000s. Computing power and image recognition had advanced to the point where you could do all kinds of crazy things with the right algorithm. You could slap a bunch ultrasonic rangefinders and cameras on a car, throw in the right logic, and have the thing park itself by letting the electric power steering turn the front wheels.
The technology has a long history. The Volkswagen Futura of 1989 allegedly featured self-parking, though it never went beyond the concept phase. It was Toyota that put it into production vehicles, with the 2003 Toyota Prius featuring ‘Intelligent Parking Assist.” This system could handle parallel parking for the driver, with later versions adding the ability to reverse park, as well. The user merely had to approach a space and activate the system, before outlining the desired parking area on the infotainment screen. The car would then take over maneuvering itself into the space.
Lexus would pickup the system for its luxury models a few years later. Other automakers were simultaneously rushing to develop their own versions. It became the hottest new feature out, and seemed to be the herald of a bright new age. Soon, surely, our cars wouldn’t just park themselves, they’d drive themselves, too!
Like so many new technologies, though, the reality on the ground wasn’t quite how it looked in the glossy sales brochures. Reviews were often mixed. Even by 2010, automotive outlets were complaining that systems were slow, unreliable, or unable to straighten up in a spot. Other complaints included the fact that the self-parking systems often required more parking space than a skilled driver, and that they simply didn’t do as good a job as a human.
Regardless, the systems proliferated anyway. By the mid-2010s, you could get a parking assist on everything from a Nissan Qashqai to a Holden Commodore. In the latter case, the self-parking system hilariously failed during at least one press event for the VF model’s big debut. It also required the driver to handle braking, lest it back into a neighboring vehicle for you.
The real problem, though? Hardly anyone actually cares.
A quick search will turn up buckets of forum posts, all asking the same thing—does anybody actually use automatic parking assists? Those with Subarus, Audis, Citroens and BMWs are all asking the same thing. While you can find some evangelists out there, many more express their distaste for these systems. Common complaints include the assists taking too long to park, or moving erratically and risking damage to the vehicle. A lot of people note they used the feature once upon first getting their car, but never found the need to enable it again.
We can openly speculate about why this might be. Ultimately, I think it comes down to a lack of trust. A skilled driver knows they can parallel park, and will rely on their own skills to do so. To them, the system is useless. The systems can be anxiety inducing, too. The driver often has to sit nervously with their foot over the brake, not knowing if the automated system is going to stop in time before clouting a neighboring car.
Volkswagen is one of the few automakers to shoot a real video of their parking assist in action. Most rely on animated footage.
The story is worse for lesser-skilled drivers who might find themselves nervous in tough parking situations. They often worry about hitting other vehicles, or holding up traffic. You’d think that a parking assistant would be perfect here, but alas, no. A digital system that takes several steps to activate doesn’t get around their anxiety about holding up traffic. Neither does the slow performance of many parking assists. Furthermore, they must tangle with the possibility that the parking assist might fail. In that case, they’d be left hanging halfway out of a park, having likely enraged multiple drivers around them. Plus, they’d then have to find a way to extract their vehicle from the precarious situation they’d gotten into.
Indeed, a study by Budget Direct in 2023 found that trust in these systems was remarkably low. Less than 24% of drivers surveyed had “considerable or complete trust” in an automated parking system. 36% had “minimal or no trust” in the technology. Similarly, in 2015, AAA found that 72% of American drivers wouldn’t trust self-parking vehicle technology in a parallel parking situation.
You might think these drivers are rare, but they’re everywhere. According to a study by The Zebra, 49% of Americans suffered from “parallelophobia”—a fear of parallel parking. In the UK, AutoTrader found driver’s heart rates spiked by over 57% during parallel parking maneuvers. 18.7% of drivers surveyed said they’d rather visit the dentist than attempt a parallel park.
Tech Woes
The plight of the parking assist is not uncommon. Indeed, the phenomena is commonly referred to as the Gartner hype cycle. When a new technology hits the scene, there is a huge rush of publicity and excitement as the world buys into the hype. This is followed by the “Trough of Disillusionment,” when the broader public realizes the technology can’t do half of what was initially promised by the media. Usually, this is followed by a general upward slope in capability as the technology matures and actually becomes useful.
It’s true that parking assists have improved over the years. In 2015, AAA found that drivers using the systems experienced 81 percent fewer curb strikes in controlled testing. Self-parking systems also parked 10% faster than the human drivers, and were able to park 37% closer to the curb.
Nevertheless, parking assists have fallen out of favor to a degree. The technology is no longer shiny and new, and it doesn’t serve as a point of difference anymore. Indeed, use rates are low enough that some automakers are ditching the option entirely.
Notably, Ford made the call to abandon its Active Parking Assist earlier this year. Ford COO Kumar Galhotra announced publicly that deleting the hardware would save the company roughly $60 per vehicle, or a total of $10 million a year. “Very, very few people are using it, so we can remove that feature,” said Galhotra.
Other automakers continue to stick with the technology, barring a few that temporarily cut the option during the COVID-19 supply chain crises. Tesla also temporarily cut the feature when it deleted ultrasonic sensors on several models. Just about every automaker has it available on some models, with some offering it as standard across their range.
Despite it’s popularity, almost nobody talks about it. The vast majority of automotive reviews don’t mention it, and it seems few customers are asking for it. In my time with the Alfa Romeo Tonale, I didn’t even notice a button for it. And yet, it’s apparently available most everywhere you look.
If you’re buying a new car, you can probably get it with a parking assist. Whether you use it or not is another thing entirely. But it seems this is one new technology that permeated the automotive world whether we gave a damn or not.
Image credits: Ford, Tesla, Holden
This is what happens when you have a product development team consisting entirely of stylists and engineers and not a single actual designer. If Adrian Clarke was right that car “designers” are just as much designers as industrial designers, then at least one company would have gotten it right.
I have a 2018 GTI with this, and it’s simply awful at the task. It takes too many steps:
In most places I’ve lived, you can get a hefty ticket for parking more than 8-12″ from the curb, but whether I parallel park on the left or right side of the street, the car simply will not get any closer than that, so I just do it myself
The Volkswagen system is abysmally bad. We have a ’19 Atlas, and it is so complicated and fussy as be be functionally useless.
My wife’s Pacifica has the button, we have never tried it. with the 360-degree cameras and warnings, why bother? we can parallel-park it ourselves.
Ok great! Now get rid of all the other electric junk and nannies and make an focus on making a car for it’s purpose: being a CAR
I get that OEMs have to save on costs where they need to, but it’s hilariously ironic that you’re able to buy a Ford with their excellent BlueCruise hands-free autonomous system but it won’t be able to park itself the same way a 2012 Focus can.
A simple how big is that space compared to your car indicator would be useful. A “three inches to spare, you’re fine!” indicator. Nothing is worse than finding out that the space is inch shorter than the car with six cars waiting to get by.
Of course the driver behind you always has to try too.
Actually, after 25 years of parallel parking in Brooklyn, when I’m in California I have to remind myself that after I park I should back up because only leaving an inch in front of me is considered rude apparently.
You can leave an inch, as long as you’re willing to put up with bumper dents. You can tell a regularly street parked car in SF by the bumper damage.
It’s so easy in a front wheel drive car. You just get the backend about where you want it, crank the front wheels, set the parking brake, pop the clutch and there you are. Easy peezy, except for the part where my wife screams at me.
I mean, it’s the parking brake right?
In a former life, I could parallel-park a semi truck with 53 feet of trailer. Parking a car ain’t shit.
So any takers on what whiz bang current technology will be considered pointless or unnecessary in a decade?
I’m going with AI and VR.
Whew. I was worried you were going to say NFTs or GameStop stock..
In that second Alfa Romeo Tonale link in the article, its got something about the car having NFT technology, whatever the fuck that is.
My car came with a heads up display (bought the car used). I hardly pay any attention to it. It’s easy to just see right past it.
What do you mean? It’s pointless and unnecessary now…
My ’15 Volvo V60 can parallel park itself. You control drive and reverse at its behest, but it’ll slot the car into tight spots flawlessly.
Huh, I have a ’15 Volvo V60 and I had no idea it could parallel park itself. However, the backup camera is so excellent, that I’ve never bothered to look 😉
First, you have excellent taste in cars and are obviously a product of good breeding.
Second, it likely depends on the trim level of your V60 (whether you have self parking).
The real story here is how did tesla FSD owners keep themselves out of that trough of disillusionment for more than TEN YEARS?
Authoritarian governments everywhere want to know
That graph looks just like my own life. I just haven’t hit the Slope of Enlightenment yet.
no one told you life was gonna be this way.
Every time I think I’ve found the bottom of the Trough of Disillusionment, something else happens and I keep sliding downward.
What seemed ridiculous to me at the time these were big was one system with which, if I remember correctly, you had to do both the the gas and the brake yourself — it did the steering only, and notified you when to go and stop. I wish I could remember which one it was.
I’ve had to parallel park like twice in the last three years, maybe. It’s just not common in the city I live in or the places I go. When I did most recently, I found that backup camera made it was easier than it used to be on my old car. Though I did have to pause while someone ran behind my care while I partway in the spot. (WTF does that?!)
If I had a feature to do it for me would I have? Hell no, unless they got fast enough that there wouldn’t be other cars behind me getting impatient. I suspect this is a technology that has largely been negated by exterior cameras.
I rented a Volkswagen Saharan (minivan) in New Zealand with this system earlier this year and I really liked it. Since I had control of the throttle, it parallel parked as quickly as I dared to drive it. In a very tight back-in spot (next to a pricey Bentley), it had me got back and forth a couple times due to space limitations, but I doubt I could have done any better.
It was not perfect. Once it tried to parallel park when there were two open pull-in parking spaces, but once I learned those limitations, I came to appreciate the system
Never had a car with it. But parallel parking isn’t a common occurrence for many, and I also know I’m competent enough to do it on my own if I have to–the backup camera and mirrors are generally adequate. (Distance to the curb is harder to tell…)
I agree, I’d have some level of fear using such a feature, knowing that the margin before hitting the curb–or much worse, another vehicle–is fairly small.
Whereas, on a lonely highway, even knowing we’re actually traveling 100+ feet per second, letting some kind of level “2” system managing it feels like a bigger margin of error for things to go wrong.
I can attest to that very uncomfortable societal pressure of having to parallel park in a hurry, though…the pull-out of shame after a failed attempt, etc.
Sounds good in concept but the execution is still too slow. It is useful to use it to judge whether a // space is large enough though. (I do feel the margin is too high).
If you live in the ‘burbs and commute to a parking lot, how often do you really need to parallel park? I know it’s a way of life for city dwellers but for most of the country it’s not an everyday task.
I went with my mom on a day out test driving cars, and self parking TERRIFIED her. I don’t think you can sell the tech on anyone over 50. Myself, I used it to return a turo car (mercedes parking system) to a spot I’d never try parking in with a rental car otherwise. Very slow, but I could see using it in an extreme pinch.
My ioniq 5 has this feature. I’ve never used it. Way faster just to park myself.
I prefer to be the source of my own shame for taking forever to do basic parking, hence, I park it myself.
Meh. Never had it and never wished to have it. Between cameras and learning the corners of the vehicle parallel parking isn’t a big deal the three times a year I parallel park.
My Mach-E has Ford’s park assist. It totally works, but it’s kind of slow, and I just never feel the need to use it.
I’d argue 360 degree cameras are the real killer app here and should be standard in all cars. I can parallel park a car just fine without them, but those make it stupid easy.
Agree. I love a 360 camera. It’s the one feature not available in the car I just bought that I was really hoping to get this time. I got a fantastic HUD (which was also on “the list”) but no 360 view.
My car does have some fancy automatic parking system though. I suspect I will never use it.
Huh. I been thinking I hardly every hear it touted as a feature anymore because it was old hat, like power assist brakes. No one crows about it because why would they? It’s so ubiquitous and perfectly implemented that no one bothers to mention it any more. I was looking forward to having it when I finally get around to buying a new up-to-date tech car. It never occurred to me that the reason I wasn’t hearing about it was because it was following 3D TV into obscurity.
But for some time now when I’ve had to parallel park I’ve absolutely nailed it, so…good riddance? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess?
Yep – remember reading all the codes in car ads for the all features they had (PS, PB, PDL, PW, AM/FM/Cass, PA, ) Now virtually every car has all of those features.
Used car dealers still do that shit.
Isn’t totally limited to them, some automakers are still blabbing about having backup cameras (Mazda), might as well just brag about seat belts and turn signals while you’re at it