A new Chinese car parking system – with floating cars that can house up to 12 in the space usually designed to park two – just proves how far China is ahead in technology.
Forget driving round and round on different levels to find a vacant spot and then having to walk around to find your car at the end of the day. In Rugao City, in the Jiangsu Province, you can park and retrieve your car in just two minutes.
At 17.5 metres high across seven floors, the car park can accommodate 224 vehicles while occupying one-fourth of the space compared with a regular car park.
The DRP12 Rotary Parking system allows for the vertical parking of 12 cars in the surface area designed to park just two.
The steel structure, with safety and detection systems, is incredibly easy to operate. It is also earthquake resistant, a bonus for China which suffers from them frequently.
The driver simply drives in and leaves the vehicle at ground level. The vehicle is automatically parked and lifted away from the bottom central position, leaving the next empty parking space available at the entrance.
The car is retrieved by an identification card or pushing a button for the relevant position number.
There are many benefits to such a design. Less land is required, it has a short installation time and can be easily moved. One unit is also currently selling for as little as £4,700 for one unit, or £3,900 for others, however this does exclude shipping, installation and maintenance costs.
It also is a lot safer to store your car, as car theft would involve hacking the technology on top of breaking in. It is unlikely someone would risk climbing into such a contraption, which has been equated to a giant vending machine.
Nevertheless, when this is compared with the likely costs for a standard underground car park, there really is no comparison, at about £12,000 per parking bay.
Reviewing such a car park, one said: “I have used this type of vertical parking carousel [a] couple of times last year in Dongguang. This thing not only save a lot of land space and construction cost but it bring[s] one huge benefit to the driver and that is… time saving.
“With this…. Once your car enter[s] the slot you can just leave and let it do its thing without worrying where you parked your car before.”
Another said that “China is living in 2050”. It appears that such a space- and money-saving infrastructure could be the way forward in a world that is increasingly running out of room.
