A survey by automotive research and advisory firm S&P Global Mobility found that Chinese consumers’ interest in and willingness to pay for fully automated parking ranked near the top of the list of desired features, higher than among American and German respondents. .
The discrepancy points to the wide gap not only between countries’ driving preferences, but also between the successes that have emerged from new automakers’ focus on developing software and automated features. Meanwhile, traditional manufacturers appear to be playing catch-up.
When humans do it better
One explanation for the divergent attitudes toward parallel parking technology, according to Symons, the car dealer, could be that the features of Western automakers simply aren’t very good. “When you pull up on the main street and you’re parallel parking, and there’s a line of cars behind you honking, self-parking systems usually feel a little slow,” he says.
in one videoPublished two years ago, Symons compared the parallel parking systems in the Tesla Model S and 3, Audi’s e-tron GT, Ford’s Mustang Mach-E, and BMW’s i4 M50, and found that while Tesla’s system was mostly disappointing, the others worked acceptably. But many systems you’ve tested have had trouble detecting the curb and tend to park too close (or too far) from the curb. “Nothing I’ve tried so far has been consistently better than a person, in any way,” he says.
Older Western self-parking systems may be affected by automakers’ outdated approach to creating new features. For newer manufacturers, including Tesla, BYD and Xpeng, automated parallel parking is “part of a comprehensive autonomous driving capability,” says Jeremy Carlson, who leads autonomous vehicle research at S&P Global Mobility. Those automakers start with software and have been willing to spend money to add additional sensors that enable more sophisticated parking performance. In contrast, other manufacturers have tended to build their elements as discrete pieces, which can lead to rigidity. “Usability can be affected,” he says.
Drivers could also be neglecting their smart parking features because they simply don’t trust the systems, says Greg Stevens, a former Ford engineer who is now director of research at MCitya vehicle technology facility associated with the University of Michigan. Parallel parking requires handling something large, heavy, and expensive in a tight space, near other large, heavy, and expensive objects, and mistakes are costly. “Overcoming that trust issue has been a big problem,” Stevens says.
Automation adulation
In urban China, by contrast, the government has groomed a new breed of middle-class drivers to embrace technology, including features made by its own customers. powerful national automotive industry. Regulators have given domestic auto companies approval to operate more automated systems on public roads, including fully autonomous vehicles.
All that exposure, a McKinsey report concluded, has increased consumer enthusiasm for autonomous driving more than in other countries. in a survey 2021 According to the consultancy, 60 percent of Chinese respondents said they would probably buy a car that could drive on the highway if the feature were offered for less than $10,000, compared with 57 percent of American respondents and 36 percent of Chinese respondents. cent of Germans.