German Parking Lot

According to most of the bloggers, these photos depict a new, highly efficient, public car parking facility located in Munich, Germany. Most of the blogs suggest that the motorist’s vehicle is “self parked” by an automated hoist system that safely deposits the car in one of an array of high-rise cubicles and then quickly and safely retrieves it when the customer returns for pick up. However, although the photographs are genuine, the accompanying description is not accurate.

The facility shown in the photographs is not a public parking garage. It is a storage facility for new Volkswagen vehicles located at the Autostadt, in Wolfsburg, Germany. The Autostadt is a sprawling complex operated by the Volkswagen Group that comprises a variety of attractions, tours and restaurants along with facilities aimed at customers who have arrived to collect a newly purchased vehicle. Part of the new car collection procedure involves the retrieval of the vehicle from the “CarTower” shown in the above photographs.

Information on the Autostadt website notes:

The next steps in the procedure are automatic: a lift in one of the CarTowers selects the correct vehicle and conveys it to the centre of the tower from where it is gently lowered to the ground floor. Thereafter the new car rolls through a tunnel into the Car Distribution Centre.

Autostadt visitors can also take a tour of the CarTowers:

Visitors to the Autostadt are now able to experience the CarTowers from the inside! A special glass, panorama lift takes six guests through the same procedure as one of the 800 cars stored in the CarTowers. Until recently the glass-encased steel construction of the CarTowers was closed to the public, now the inside of the Autostadt’s most well-known landmark can be explored from top to bottom.

Two 160-foot circular towers store 400 new cars on 20 levels, serviced by a central elevator that can retrieve a car in 30 seconds. Stacking cars in close-packed racks can be up to 50 percent more efficient than a conventional garage.

Even without knowing details about the structure shown in the photographs, more observant viewers would quickly notice that all the vehicles appear to be the same make and none have number plates, thus immediately casting doubt on the claims that it is a public parking garage.

For the record, automated “robot” car-parking garages do actually exist. One such facility in New York City uses an automated elevator system to park the cars of patrons. An AP article published on SFGate.com notes:

The driver stops the car on a pallet and gets out. The pallet is then lowered into the innards of the garage, and transported to a vacant parking space by a computer-controlled contraption similar to an elevator that also runs sideways.

The Emirates Financial Towers, a large construction project underway in Dubai, will incorporate an automated car parking system that will contain 1,200 car spaces.