I wonder how reliable this system is? MTBF? Hopefully cars can be manually removed if something breaks down.
One of my proudest lifehacks was when my motor scooter broke down in Hollywood and I had to pull into an overpriced parking garage to get it off the street for a few hours until I could retrieve it in my pickup truck. Later that evening I returned, loaded up the scooter, and only paid for the 5 minutes that my truck was in the garage.
Take THAT, L.A. parking!
Are there safeguards to ensure nothing living is in the car?
I’m parking there right now.
How was it?!
I’m still “doing” it, I will report later.
If it gets stuck just try rocking the thing back and forth a couple of times. I was able to score a free Lexus that way once.
Remember: if the garage does not keep paying their service contract the company will probably disable the robots and your cars will be stuck until the bill gets paid. These garages usually have DRM.
Could they post the state of their agreements before you trust them with your car?
I love how they have you drive in head first, then have a whole mechanized plate that just turns your car 180 degrees. Because humans suck at backing into things. Such a good piece of evidence for the argument that, on the whole, we shouldn’t be operating vehicles ourselves.
It’s funny: I generally do a better job backing in, compared to pulling in forward.
I just can’t get the hang of how long I need to wait before I start the turn in, whereas when you back in, you can realize pretty quickly whether you’re going to be centered in the space or not.
While it’s technically located within the city of Los Angeles, West Hollywood is its own city, with its own sheriff’s department, city hall, mayor, etc. In many ways, it’s more progressive, and treats its residents better, than LA proper. The WeHo Fire Department is part of Los Angeles county’s system, not LAFD. WeHo also has several public transportation options - such as a local mini bus system, a night-time shuttle, free senior transportation, and bike rentals coming soon. As a result, rent and property prices are also higher than LA prices. It’s a pretty safe, diverse, fun town to live in, with a good government and public services, plenty of cool shops and restaurants, and is a nightmare for Drumph supporters.
Seems like a strange solution to this problem. Most automated garages are more like a metal rack that you drive onto, which is then stashed somewhere with your car. The lifting robot thing seems like a major point of failure, which could potentially damage tires.
That’s so great a symptom of social inequality, misallocated resources and a poorly conceived tax regime.
Know what else is kind of lame? Those automated car washes that make your car sit still while the roller brushes pass over and around it. I want a car wash that you drive through at full speed, like a stunt course where you have to maneuver between spinning brushes and water jets. Then you dry it off by flooring it through a ring of fire.
Do I recall Mitt Romney has one of these at home?
Actually I was wondering if I could sleep in the back of my van while it was inside that machine.
Parking in LA is a bad experience.
With an accomplice on the outside, seems very doable.
Side note… I was hoping the cars would whiz around like in a factory, VERY DISAPPOINTED in slow garage is slow.
About 40 years ago, my parents put their car in an automated garage that involved a two directional (vertical and side to side) elevator. You put your car on a roller platform which was rolled onto the elevator and people brought the elevator to the correct cubbyhole and pushed the roller platform out. This was complicated by the fact that the cubbyholes were more than one car deep, so that sometimes they had to get the car that was in front out of the way. I was fascinated, and I don’t even remember what city this was in.
