The self-parking feature will be eliminated as an option on upcoming Ford vehicles, for two reasons:
It will save Ford a whole heap of money
Very few people seem to use that feature
My current car has that feature, and in the 15 months that I’ve owned it, I used self-parking only once–and that was just to test it. Living in a rural/suburban area, I hardly ever need to park at the curb, and if I do need to do so, there is usually so much available space that I don’t have to try to squeeze into a really tight spot.
I suppose that folks who live in urban areas, and who have to park in the street might miss it, but I know that I wouldn’t care if my own vehicle lacked that feature.
I parallel park all the time. Tesla’s updated sensor system shows the cars on either side, parking spot lines, and even shows arcs for wheel tracks to pull in. All that in addition to the rear view camera that also has wheel tracks based on how the front wheels are turned. It makes backing into a spot very easy.
Hyundai and Kia have that feature to as I recalland advertise it on TV.
Does your Tesla park it for you? Or just provide you with the sensing?
Since most of the self parking is software, I suspect the savings is the removal of proximity sensors and the wiring. Backup cameras are required now but that single camera wouldn’t be enough for self parking.
Buick touts self parking as do several others. Maybe their customers use the feature or the sensors are there for other features so could not be removed.
Yes, and no, IMHO.
I know a guy who can’t park to save his life, even though he purposely bought the tiniest car he could find–a Scion IQ. He desperately wants a car with the self-parking feature, but he also wants an ultra-cheapo car with no bells and whistles, and as I have explained to him, that combination doesn’t exist.
He also drives like Grandma (15 mph on city streets, 45 mph on expressways), and is adamant that the people constantly honking at him are in the wrong–not him. But, I imagine that there are some people who are capable of keeping-up with the flow of traffic, but who are still not good at parallel parking.
I think that the ability to parallel park is not necessarily a good measure of someone’s overall driving ability.
It will par the car but I won’t implement autopilot and is therefore not available to me. Still, the parallel and perpendicular sensor features work very well and I’m happy to use them.
A good back up camera as jtsanders was talking about (my daughters Corolla has one also) and old school curb feelers is all he needs… and I didn’t think you knew Chris…
Only kidding…
Unfortunately, I don’t think that those things would help him. Even with a parking space several feet longer than his tiny car, he still manages to wind-up at least 2 feet from the curb. He goes back & forth repeatedly in an effort to correct the situation, but he always gives up and remains way too far from the curb–in a congested town with very narrow streets.
A big part of the problem–I think–is that he goes into panic mode whenever he is behind the wheel, and I base this theory at least partially on his inability to find a destination, even when using a Garmin. I purposely drove with him (yes, it was a true white-knuckle experience) in order to observe what he did. It turned-out that when Garmin told him “right turn approaching in 600 feet”, he would immediately crank the wheel and make the next turn–even if it was a parking lot or a private driveway.
His other problem with Garmin was that he had set it for “avoid expressways and toll roads”, and as a result his return home from my house took him 2.5 hours, instead of the 1.25 hours that it should have taken. He complains that the Garmin “always gets him lost” when it is actually himself that causes all of his problems.
Just in my own defence, we learned parking years ago in drivers training and never had a problem until the new generation of cars and poor visibility. If you don’t have the rear camera and sensors, you just can’t turn around in your seat anymore to look out the back window.
Same thing with backing a trailer. Never had a problem when I could see it out the back window or mirrors, but not any more.
Try opening the door for a look back… Until your car has electric parking brakes, that is!! The car wants to “save” you so it throws the e-brake on to prevent you from that unsafe habit.
In 1965, when I got my first drivers license, the California DMV made you parallel before you left the parking lot for the driving test. A pretty significant percentage of test takers never made it out of the parking lot on their first try.
Back in those days, parallel parking was a standard part of the driving test in every state, AFAIK. That was the only part of my 1964 driving test that I feared, but I managed to park properly.
However, I lost one point because I had failed to use a hand signal for stopping, even though my father’s car had functioning stop lights. (Yeah, that examiner was a real d*ck head). After that demerit, I made sure that I used hand signals for turning–in addition to using the car’s directional signals. That one demerit wasn’t enough to fail me, luckily.
More and more I feel like auto manufacturers are inventing new tech just to call it “new”. Or more likely, just to be able to charge extra $$$ for it.
I’m thinking of this self-parking feature, self-driving, truck tailgates that open and fold every which way, all sorts of lane warning/auto-braking, and my personal favorite: remote start. I get the value of remote start if it’s 10 below 0 outside and all that. But that majority of people I know that have remote start live in warm, comfortable environments.
What I found interesting about the remote start on my friend’s 2021 Forester, is that–unlike earlier versions of remote start–the engine isn’t cut-off when the driver opens the door. Yes, for the all of the Luddites out there, I can report that the interface between the car’s electronics and the owner’s Smartphone yield a nice improvement, in that the engine continues to run… but only for the owner/driver of the car.
That being said, I don’t need to use remote start on my PHEV because I use its battery-only drive mode for all drives of less than 50 miles.
Remote-start seems sort of unsafe, engine fires continue to burn b/c no one is there to notice, etc. Or even if a pet cat is sleeping on the engine. Wondering if there’s any add’l safety measures that come with the auto-start option?
Yeah I had to park too. It was in a snow storm on a slight hill. Before proceeding I had to get out and clean the snow off the back window. Don’t recall if I left the car running or properly shut it off first. I got a 94 so lost points on something but don’t know what. I think the 6-5 patrolman was just happy to get out of the bench seat.
