The Big Apple is catching on to the increasingly high demand for more parking and is solving the problem in Chinatown with robots. Automotion Parking Systems will be opening the first automatic, robotic parking garage in NYC next month. The garage will have only one attendant available to take cash payments and to explain the system to new users. Costing about $400 a month or $25 per day, a driver will be able to pull his car up to the platform, get out, and let the garage do the rest of the work. Retrieving the vehicle is automatic as well and is supposed to be completely damage proof.
Consumers got a bad taste of automatic parking when a similar garage in Hoboken, NJ dropped two cars from four stories or higher. The garage also had multiple malfunctions and kept cars trapped inside for extended periods of time. Hopefully all that will change with NYC’s version. Automotion says that its service will be competitive, safe, and easy to use. We’d really hate to have the official CrunchGear company car (John’s lime green VW bug with puke stains on the seats) damaged by the robots we treasure in our hearts.
Pack ’em in [CNN]