Driverless parking is here

Bosch and Daimler have reached a milestone on the way to automated driving: the two companies have now obtained approval from the relevant authorities in Baden-Württemberg for their automated parking system in the Mercedes-Benz Museum parking garage in Stuttgart.

The automated valet parking service is accessed via a smartphone app and requires no safety driver. This makes it the world’s first fully automated driverless SAE Level 4 parking function to be officially approved for everyday use.

It’s ever so easy to use. The regular driver enters the garage, gets out and sends the car to a parking space just by tapping on a smartphone screen. Once the driver has left the parking garage to go about their business, the car drives itself to an assigned space and parks. Later, the car returns to the drop-off point in exactly the same way.

As someone who truly hates alley docking trucks, I sincerely hope that we will see trucks parking themselves like this one day!