Summon Your Tesla from Your Phone

Re:Summon Your Tesla from Your Phone by duderific on Monday January 11, 2016 @04:42PM (#10883818)

How the heck would the car know where there is more readily available parking? It seems like parking is a whole other area of work that needs to be done. It would need to: - Know local parking lots - Know that if a sign says "full" it can't go in - If it's not full, somehow grab the ticket out of the machine - Know the difference between parallel parking and other types - Know if a meter is expired - Pay for a meter if it is, or not if it isn't - Tell how much time is left on a meter - Be able to read parking restriction signs (street sweeping, restricted time ranges) - Etc. etc.

Edit: tried hard to get the above to output as a bullet list, couldn't get it to work.

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Re:Summon Your Tesla from Your Phone by dntrkv on Monday January 11, 2016 @06:11PM (#10884342)

a. You can use parking / traffic data to find neighborhoods most likely to have available street parking and look for parking there. As for solving the problem of when you're allowed to park somewhere, this is already being worked on [0][1] and I would put money on it being ready before autonomous cars.

b. Use parking garage app to find the best balance between distance and price of parking for the time needed. As far as determining if the garage is full, many garages have sensors now that count how many open spaces there are. It would not be stretch to assume that by the time autonomous cars are ready, this data will be available within the parking apps.

c. One of the cool things about having a computer make these decisions is that it can factor in a limitless amount of data to make the most efficient decision. Kind of how Google Maps gives you different transportation options when you ask for directions, you could do the same with parking. The car can ask you, which of these options would you like:

1. Drive 30 minutes in this direction and you can park for free. Cost for power to drive there: $1.12 - Time to summon: 30 minutes - Cost for parking: $0.00

2. Park in a parking lot around the block: Cost for power to drive there: $0.08 - Time to summon: 5 minutes - Cost for parking: $10.00

etc...

I agree with you though, parking is a huge issue in the city and I really can't believe it hasn't been fixed yet. We are getting there, but very slowly.

[0] http://sfpark.org [1] http://spotangels.com

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Re:Summon Your Tesla from Your Phone by mschuster91 on Monday January 11, 2016 @06:03PM (#10884310)

Cloud parking. If a car spots a parking spot (cities could encode these in Google Maps, too, for example) which is free, it notifies the cloud.

Cities may also take advantage of already ubiquitous CCTVs and optical recognition software to provide parking info.

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Re:Summon Your Tesla from Your Phone by scott_o on Monday January 11, 2016 @06:05PM (#10884316)

parking garages/lots would be incentivized to work with manufacturers to come up with automated ways to check in and out because it directly leads to more revenue for them (and less hassle with accidents I'd bet)

Just availability is already available and popular in some cities, Seattle for instance http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/epark/default.htm

I think you're vastly overstating the complexity of figuring if a parking spot is available and paying for it.

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