But no, what we’ve got video of here is a kind of parking garage in Japan, in which cars enter via one small door, and are whisked away on a series of rails and scaffolding to be held in one central repository.  When you want to recover your car, you simply enter a code attached to your car’s section of scaffolding, then the car is brought around to the entrance.  You back out and drive away.

This is actually a really great idea as it destroys the idea of getting trapped or being forced to wait in a parking lot.  And it eliminates the problem of pedestrians in and around the parking lot as well.

So enjoy the video–it’s strange, but I assure you, it’s true.  That actually serves as a basic primer on Japanese culture, for the most part, too.

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I’m talking of course about the parallel parking device, invented by students at the University of Toledo.

The device is fairly simple–a set of hydraulics raises the back end of the car slightly off the ground and, via a separate control, allows the back end to be moved, horizontally, effectively “swinging” it into a parking space.  The video of same is directly below.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if a handful of college kids could put this on themselves, I don’t know how this isn’t standard on every car.  It can’t cost that much–as I said, college kids put it on.  And helpful?  You can rest assured it would be.  This is the kind of thing we need a lot more of.

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You’re constantly surprised in this business, and in a way, that’s awesome.

So imagine my shock when I’m reading AskMen’s top ten useless car gadgets list (guys, come on–the Bose Media System doesn’t count as a useless gadget because you’d rather listen to ENGINE NOISE) and I come across a real shocker.

Apparently, curb feelers never went out of style, and they’ve gone digital.  Called the Park Distance Control, it basically helps you figure out when a space is too small to park your Mini in or if you can hack it, and once you can, gives you some help in getting in safely.  As we all remember from driver’s ed, parallel parking is an epic-scale pain in the tukhus.

I can’t imagine anyone, however, having this much trouble parking a Mini Cooper.  Now, some van or pickup or LeBehemoth-class SUV from GM might be a different call, but a Mini Cooper might well be the class of vehicle that LEAST needs parking help.  It’s like putting a second story on your pickup bed.

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Dell put in a bunch of solar panel structures in its parking lot, which serve two basic functions:  one, it provides free electricity to the parked cars.  If you ever needed a jump and couldn’t find another car, well, the Dell lot’s got you covered.  And of course, anyone who drives a plug-in hybrid or full electric vehicle is also covered.

But what most gas car drivers will get out of this is one very rare thing in a parking lot: shade.

We’ve all suffered through a hot car in summertime, sitting in that boiling heat box until the air conditioner can finally overcome the  stifling heat in your car.  But with shaded structures like this, you can park underneath them and keep your car cool.  Meanwhile, free electricity!

That’s a win-win for everybody no matter what kind of car they drive.

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via Green Launch

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