The Prius' self-parking system

Posted Thu Jul 20 2006 9:51 PM by Ralph Hanson

Depending on who you are, you’re either going to love or loathe the new self-parking systems on high-tech cars. Toyota’s Prius is one of the first production cars to come with such a system, and you can use it while parking in difficult spots in shopping centers or even parallel parking.

Hungarian site Totalcar.hu gives us a first look at the control systems used to park. The Prius has a camera installed in the rear and overlays a grid so you can point to where the parking spot is, and how the car should get there.

This system seems fairly complicated though, and will probably take much longer than just parking the car yourself, even if it’s a tight spot. Shopping center car parks are already overcrowded, and this isn’t going to help when you’ve got granny in her new Prius trying to get it to work.

BMW has recently jumped on the self-parking bandwagon, though notably their system only works for when you’re parking your car in the garage. More info on the BMW system here.

Click here for the original article and a short video of the system in action.

MotorAuthority