What is park assist?
Tesla Smart Summon is the first technology to partially achieve this capability. As long as you’re within 200 feet of the car, you can use a smartphone app to summon a Tesla with this feature to your location. Early versions of this technology proved troublesome, so there is work to be done. Front and Rear Park Assist is not designed to detect all children, pedestrians, bicyclists, animals or objects below the bumper. Delete the phone that is no longer in use from your vehicle’s “Paired Bluetooth Devices” list.
The expanded version of RSPA works similar to Ford Active Park Assist 2.0, except you’re not sitting in the car. With the expanded RSPA, after the car finds an appropriate parking space, the driver activates the fully autonomous technology and exits the vehicle. The driver then commands the car to autonomously park in a parallel or perpendicular parking space using the remote keyfob. You’ll still receive Seat Park Assist alerts and seat pulses during automatic parking to help you stay aware of detected objects around your vehicle. If you want to cancel the maneuver, either press the AUTOMATIC PARKING ASSIST button, manually take control of the steering or shift gears.
Visibility, weather and road conditions may affect feature performance. Read the vehicle Owner’s Manual for more important feature limitations and information. Therefore, every driver must use their own best judgment when using automatic parking assist systems.
The driver remains in control throughout, and can abort the maneuver at any time by simply taking hold of the steering wheel. According to Chevrolet, the rear bumper of vehicles with Available Rear Park Assist feature ultrasonic sensors that alert drivers if they detect vehicles or objects within eight feet behind you. When in Reverse or parking mode, the system stays at a safe speed under 5 mph and alerts drivers to possible hazards. For those equipped with the IPAS, the car itself steers into a parking space with minimal help from the driver.
The feature will tell you when you should remove your hands from the wheel, so it can steer your vehicle during the maneuver. The driver can of course intervene at any time in the automatic parking process. The system parks automatically both in parallel parking as well as in parking bays. Enhanced Automatic Parking Assist can also help you pull out of a parallel or perpendicular parking space in some situations. On some older vehicles, this feature can only unpark from parallel parking spaces when there are no other vehicles in front of your vehicle. Upon shifting into reverse and activating the backup camera system, drivers must choose the reverse park option on the touchscreen, which makes the grid appear once again.
Enhanced Automatic Parking Assist does not detect or avoid traffic that is behind or alongside your vehicle. You must always be ready to override the feature during the parking maneuver. Remember, Enhanced Automatic Parking Assist does not respond to changes in the parking space, such as a nearby vehicle moving or a person or object entering the parking space. Thankfully, with the advancement of technology, you can now get cars that can pretty much park itself – most will only require you to control the accelerator and the brakes. The only downside is that most of the cars with such features tend to be on the pricey side. It does not parallel park a vehicle without the drivers’ assistance.
You must remain in the vehicle during the parking maneuver and must always be prepared to override the feature by manually steering. You must be prepared to apply harder braking, steering and gear selection as needed. Overriding steering and gear selection will disable automatic parking.
Bosch also partnered with Mercedes-Benz to develop Intelligent Park Pilot. Cast as a replacement for the typical valet parking attendant, this system parks the all-new 2021 Mercedes-Benz S-Class for you and retrieves it when you’re ready to leave. The hardware is already available in the new S-Class but requires more parking lot infrastructure investment before Mercedes will activate it.
