BMW May Allow You to Never Set Foot in a Parking Garage Again

The BMW logo is seen during the 83rd Geneva Motor Show

BMW is really looking towards the future with their cars as of recently, which is never a bad thing. The company has been putting a lot of focus into making their “i” cars a reality with models like the i8 and i3 finally hitting markets after being concept designs for so many years. While many companies are trying to move more towards the hybrid end of the market, BMW is already planning on incorporating smartwatch communication into their future car designs.

BMW is hoping to have a fully automated remote valet parking assistant up and running for display by CES 2015. The company is currently creating a special model of their i3 electric car that will communicate with smartwatches and safely park in any available space in a parking lot. No human interaction will be necessary at all to do this if everything goes according to plan. The process would be as simple as people getting out of their cars and access the function through their smartwatch while the car does all of the work. BMW’s plan goes as far as having the function set up so that the car will know when people are returning to their vehicles to which the car will meet them right at the entrance of their location.

This isn’t the first time that a company has attempted to roll out a self parking feature for a car (Audi displayed theirs at CES 2013) but BMW is attempting to separate their product by making the car able to drive through the lot by itself and find an open parking space. There is a ton that could go wrong with this function, mainly hoping that the GPS connection will always be stable, but this is a very interesting idea nonetheless. The car would be able to identify stoplights, traffic or even pedestrians and stop accordingly for all of them. It would be a huge step forward if BMW could get this idea to work come CES 2015.

Photo by Harold Cunningham/Getty Images

Written by Blaise Hopkins

Feel free to contact Blaise on Twitter @Blaisehopkins or check out his blog Man and His Movies.