November 5, 2006 The demonstration of the latest magic trick in auto electronics, automated parallel parking, was a slightly unsettling look at technology now arriving in showrooms. Toyota´s Advanced Parking Guidance System, an early version of which first appeared on second-generation Prius hybrids in Japan, rolled out last month in an improved form on the 2007 Lexus LS 460. Other automated systems are coming forward, too. The first, from the French automotive supplier Valeo, also takes the wheel out of the hands of drivers, creating a faster, electronically assisted version of parallel parking. Another system, shown by Hella, a German autoparts supplier, during an automotive electronics conference in Detroit last month, will be on the road by 2009. Continental, another supplier, also announced it was developing a system. According to Bob Allan, the manager of Lexus´s dealer-training programs, the hardest adjustment for drivers is leaving the steering wheel alone to do its work. The tendency is to grab the wheel, he said, because parking is a high-stress maneuver. “It takes a little bit of trust to actually let the vehicle steer itself in,” said Mr. Allan, who has been introducing the Lexus LS 460´s self-parking feature to dealers and journalists. Ask any driver — especially freshly minted ones — about driving challenges and parallel parking will be high on the list. The maneuver, essentially steering the car from the wrong end as you back into a space, is a bit like pushing a shopping cart backwards. There can be big penalties for banging into anything, under the often-impatient gaze of a line of other drivers. For elderly drivers, twisting around to catch visual cues can be physically challenging. “Of course, the demographic for the LS is a little bit older person,” Mr. Allan said. “It just adds another comfort and safety feature for those people, so they don´t have to twist their neck as much.” The option is not cheap. On the long-wheelbase version Lexus LS 460L, a $71,715 car on which the navigation system, video interface and sonar parking assist sensors come standard, it is a $1,200 package. On the regular-wheelbase LS 460, the price is slightly more than $4,000 because it requires the purchase of equipment that is standard on the LS 460L. Valeo´s offering, called Park4U, will arrive on the Volkswagen Touran, a compact multipurpose van, in 2007 in Europe, said Dennis Laabs, director for North American research and development at Valeo. Pricing for the Valeo system has not been announced, although a company representative demonstrating it in Detroit last month said the option would not be very expensive on a fully equipped car. Bryan Krulikowski, an auto analyst who is senior research director at the consulting firm Harris Interactive, said self-parking systems were interesting technology, but did not yet have a proven market. He said that in Europe and Japan, where parking was at a premium and space was tight, the systems might attract more interest. “It will be interesting to see if it is something that consumers will respond well to,” Mr. Krulikowski said. “Will there be enough demand to trickle down to the mass vehicle segments? I don´t know.” Each of the systems builds on high-tech sensor arrays already used to warn drivers of obstacles as they ease into parking places or back up in low-vision conditions. The self-parking systems also require cars to be equipped with electric power steering, which has become more common on new models. The addition of custom software together with the use of data flowing through the vehicle´s network puts the pieces together for drivers. “We have over 40 computers on the car and they all talk to each other over a data network,” Mr. Allan said. “Because of that high-speed communication we can have all these processors work together.” On the Lexus, the parallel-parking system uses the touch screen of the G.P.S. navigation system to show an image of the desired parking space from the back-up camera. The driver must select an appropriate parking space; having chosen one, the driver taps a button on the screen to enable the parking feature. At that point, the screen displays either a green box or a red box superimposed over the camera view of the space. A green box means the car is in the proper position for parking; red means the car must be repositioned before activating the system. Also displayed is a yellow flag that the driver positions on the screen to mark the leading corner of the parking space. Though it sounds complex, the task is easy, Mr. Allan said. “Once you´ve done it a couple of times, it´s very simple. You know how far to pull up, hit the icon, the flag will automatically be in the right spot,” he said. During the maneuver the driver controls only the brake. Touching the steering wheel or the accelerator disengages the self-parking feature. While the driver controls the speed, the car spins the steering wheel as it idles backward into the parking spot. Then it is up to the driver to stop, shift into forward gear and straighten the wheels. While the Lexus parking system seems almost magical, there are limits to its abilities. The system is designed to work only with the engine at near-idle speed, so the car cannot back up a hill to park on an incline. It´s not an urban warrior, either. The system is meant to work best in a parking space that gives at least six feet of clearance — three in front, three behind — in addition to the length of the car. “The nice thing about it is, it does it the same every time and you get real comfortable knowing you´re not going to swap paint with the next car,” Mr. Allan said. “When we showed it in New York, they said ‘Why do you have a system? We just scrape the paint and bump the fenders.´ ” That is not the case in Japan, where a driver whose car even touches another while parking is honor-bound to wait for the other car´s owner to return to explain the mishap. Japanese driving practices are also clear in the Lexus´s other parking ability, automatically backing into a parking spot such as those at a grocery store or shopping mall. Japan favors nose-out parking, while in much of North America ordinances require nose-in parking, something the Lexus cannot do automatically. Valeo´s system will differ from Toyota´s in that it uses computer algorithms to identify appropriate parking spaces, and not only backs the vehicle into the space but also handles the forward straightening move. Instead of a video screen, the Valeo system is intended to simply show icons and text commands after the driver pushes a button to start it. Mr. Laabs of Valeo said the system scanned either side of the road for available spaces, even while the vehicle was moving up to nearly 15 miles an hour. The system beeps to let the driver know it has found a space, and signals the driver when to stop and when to shift into reverse. The Valeo system spins the steering wheel, but unlike Toyota´s offering, Park4U lets the driver control both brakes and accelerator, adding power to park uphill or on uneven or rutted surfaces. If the driver grabs the steering wheel, though, or exceeds a speed of somewhat less than four m.p.h. while parking, the system shuts off.
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