Comments on: Volkswagen Passat parks itself alone

By: VW_Freak

VW_Freak — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:10:19 +0000

# JapanCarBlog.com Says:
May 4th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

“My car’s a 1988 Sentra with a $25,000 insurance payout if damaged in a no-fault accident. I’d love to have a Passat crash into it.”

Huh? A what…?!? Sorry mate, we don’t get those here in Ausland. :)

By: Blue

Blue — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:49:21 +0000

I don’t trust the PEOPLE who OWN Passats to park next to my car!!! I am sure the car will do a better job !

By: JapanCarBlog.com

JapanCarBlog.com — Sun, 04 May 2008 02:56:03 +0000

My car’s a 1988 Sentra with a $25,000 insurance payout if damaged in a no-fault accident. I’d love to have a Passat crash into it.

By: Minnow

Minnow — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:23:00 +0000

reckless, yeah its good for people who cant drive.. this would help them, that was my open sentence. But for the majority of normal capable drivers this technology is pointless. If you cant reverse park.. park forwards its much faster and wouldn’t it annoy you to have someone get out of their car to watch it park itself while your idling there with a clearly stupid driver too lazy to learn to reverse park when they could have easily front parked?

By: No Name

No Name — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:31:33 +0000

The parallel parking systems currently available in I think a Lexus or a Merc wouldn’t work in 9 out of 10 cases. They all require huge spaces that are not typically available. I would love to see it work with a 300mm gap.

By: No Name

No Name — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:21:07 +0000

Reckles 1 – Nah mate I’m not a wanker. perhaps saying I wouldn’t trust it was wrong. I take it back, I would trust it. BUT what I will say is IT WILL NOT WORK for anything but a huge parking space with plenty of room in both the space and the approaches. How many times have you had to do a 3plus point manouver to get into a spot in an underground car park. Like to see it work there. NAH couldn’t do it.

By: realcars

realcars — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:57:44 +0000

agree Alex!

By: realcars

realcars — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:54:52 +0000

Here is some advice for nothing VW. Just do what u do best and keep making good Euro cars.

Leave the gimmicky bullshit to Lexus.

By: realcars

realcars — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:51:38 +0000

If u can’t park u shouldn’t drive.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:25:09 +0000

To all the people who say that the people who dont like it are being stupid then I think that they neeed to consider that when you spend $50,000 on a car you probably don’t want to risk the car scratching itself! And there would always be that slight worry. What if the tech goes wrong after while – my VCR buggered up the other day after 15 years of use – why wouldn’t this? (And yes I know its a Volkswagen) The other problem is that I don’t think there would be a person out there who would just get out of the car and walk away while it parked – they would stand and watch! So most people who buy this tech will be absolute WANKERS! They will simply be showing off! I would seriously think about getting the one that parks itself with you inside but I think that this one is sort of pointless. They need to get this tech on Touaregs though so soccer mums stop denting my car!

By: c1ockwork

c1ockwork — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:07:54 +0000

I have to say that speed appears to be the issue here for me. This looks very, very slow. The reality is that if it takes twice as long to park as I could do it in, then I’m unlikely to want to use the system. Otherwise, I’m all for it. Why wouldn’t you be?

I love all these ‘I wouldn’t trust it’ comments. Are you all the same people who complained during the 80s with the introduction of Electronic Fuel Injection because you’d no longer be able to fix/service your car with a shifting spanner?

Just keep it as an option – then all the hopeless parkers can option it up and those who don’t see the value don’t need to pay for something they won’t use. Simple.

By: Camski

Camski — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:49:33 +0000

Reckless – You say it’s coming from the German’s and NOT the Japanese, well the Japanese beat them by actually having a working system (although with the driver in the car) in a production car for sale NOW.

I see two issues with not having the driver in the car and that is if it miscalculates and is about to hit something (it would appear that a button is held down via the remote and presumably if released the car would [assumingly] immediately stop) or if it miscalculates and returns an error, meaning you have to get back in and either park yourself or reset the system (result = road rage).

I do quite like the idea though.

By: realcars

realcars — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:23:42 +0000

may as well catch a train or bus. Technology for it’s own sake. Just stupid.

Cannot compare valid advances in tech such as ABS ESP etc with gimmicks like this.

Thought as much F-O this right up Toyotas bullshit alley.

By: Frugal-One

Frugal-One — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:59:37 +0000

Eerrrrrrrr, like WTF?

BigT have had this on the Lexus and some other models, like the Prius for years?

What kept vw?

Cheers

F-0

By: Reckless1

Reckless1 — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:48:49 +0000

Minnow, your comments are self-contradictory.

You finish by saying it’s no faster than a human, but you open by saying humans are impossibly slow at this.

Where’s your head at dude ?????

By: Minnow

Minnow — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:20:34 +0000

Who here has been caught behind someone who decides to park in reverse… only they cant do it fast enough and you sit there waiting for them to fit their little suzuki swift into a truck bay? This would help the morons who cant park, but then again that car was slower at it than me. Wouldn’t it just pee you off to then have the driver get out, and smugly control their car with a remote while they watch their veedub park while standing in front of your car (like FREAKING MOVE). I can fit 5m of falcon wagon into that bay 15sec faster than that car. Who needs this technology, its no faster than a human.

By: Reckless1

Reckless1 — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:04:13 +0000

F1, not quite correct – the Tiguan has automated parallel parking, whereas this is one step further.

By: f1worldchamp

f1worldchamp — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:37:33 +0000

Guys, the Tiguan will have this and is released at the end of May. It’s already in production!

By: Baji

Baji — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:34:35 +0000

Whilst this self park technology is quite interesting, it is still quite new and there are going to be flaws and problems with it that no doubt get fixed up later along the track. The problem i see with this type of technology is that people will begin to depend on it and lose any ability to park themselves.

By: Alec

Alec — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:24:27 +0000

how does it change from Drive to Reverse and then back again??
The T-Bar looked pretty mechanical to me….