Apcoa Parking and Bosch have announced a partnership to introduce driverless parking in several major German cities.
The car park operator and Bosch plan to install the technology in 15 parking garages across Germany including Hamburg and Munich.
The move follows Bosch and Mercedes-Benz receiving approval from Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) in December to deploy automated valet parking – without human oversight, within the P6 parking garage run by Apcoa at Stuttgart Airport.
Work to expand the infrastructure-based, automated, and driverless SAE Level 4 parking system is set begin shortly. As a first step, Bosch and Apcoa are planning to make up to four parking spaces per parking garage ready for automated valet parking.
In the years ahead, Bosch said its modular system will allow the number of parking spaces featuring the infrastructure technology to be quickly expanded to up to 200 parking bays at each of the 15 locations.
We will expand the number of such parking spaces based on the expected ramp-up of vehicles featuring automated valet parking. Our experience with charge spots for electric vehicles shows us how important it is for infrastructure growth to keep pace with the technology,” said Dr Markus Heyn, member of the Bosch board of management and chairman of the mobility solutions business sector.
“Together with our partner Apcoa, we are now making sure that this will be the case for automated valet parking.”
The master agreement now signed by Bosch and Apcoa is the first step toward a worldwide scaling with a goal of equipping several hundred parking garages across the globe with automated valet parking.
