With the Ford tech on board, you’ll see a crowd-sourced map on your dashboard screen which flags up any free spaces, in real time. So how does it work?
“Collaborative parking is powered by data from the parking sensors of vehicles using the car park. This informs the map that shows which spaces may be free,” Christian says. The map can also feed from data from the car parks’ own monitoring systems.
Ford is among project partners to have developed the tech and other vehicle‑to‑infrastructure technologies as part of the UK Autodrive project, a £20m government-sponsored programme that takes self-driving and connected-car technologies from the test track to the streets.
Other facets of Ford’s work within the scheme include systems that warn you when emergency services vehicles need to overtake, and when cars unseen – perhaps hidden by a bend in the road ahead – brake suddenly.
