While Audi works on their self-driving car, the company has added the ability for their cars to find parking spaces for you. This will probably come as a huge relief to those who have spent hours driving around the city trying to find a space without any luck.
Using the car’s navigational system – provided it’s equipped with Audi Connect – driver can now scroll through a list of garages in the area. You can then sort options by price, and location, as well as see the entrance on Google Street View. Provided the data is on the system, it can also tell you how many spaces are available.
The amount of information available depends on how modern the garage itself is. Some use up-to-date technology and can communicate fluently with the database that Audi Connect runs off. Others however, can only display the parking lot’s hours and rates – making it more difficult for Audi to find parking spaces for you.
The database currently lists more than 18,000 garages and parking lots in North America, and 42,000 in Europe. It’s powered by INRIX, a company that provides real-time traffic data, and likely to continue growing as the service is used by more and more people.
Apart from guiding you to the address of the garage, the company boasts that the system can also guide drivers to the actual entrance, which might not always be on the same street as the garage’s address.
Audi will launch the new parking feature as an over-the-air update to any existing and new Audi models equipped with the Audi Connect online service.
While the car can’t actually park itself in the space once you find it, yet… It’s likely that a lot of time, gas, money and stress will be save with this latest upgrade.
Have you ever spent hours trying to find a parking space? Do you trust Audi to find parking spaces for you instead?
Image: via machinehappy.com
