Benz follows BMW with self-parking app

Mercedes-Benz has been caught out by BMW's new 7 Series, which features a self-parking facility that can be operated from a smartphone app.

But Stuttgart isn't letting Munich occupy all the high-tech territory. The three-pointed star has recruited its long-standing partner Bosch to help develop a similar system – but with a twist. Unlike BMW's system, the Benz system will do all the thinking for you, as long as it's operating in a car park with intelligent infrastructure. The car will park itself, not rely on the driver to control the vehicle by a smartphone app.

The problem with that, of course, is that the Benz system is contingent on intelligent car park infrastructure, and doesn't seem like the car can park itself in a homeowner's garage, or by the side of a road in a shopping strip. And in Australia it's all academic anyway, for the time being at least.

"Fully automated parking will be ready for mass-production before fully automated driving", says Bosch board member, Dr Dirk Hoheisel.

"Low driving speeds and the information from the car park infrastructure enable a fast implementation."

Benz anticipates the system will be brought to mass market by its car-swap business, car2go. Customers can book the vehicle through car2go and have it drive up to a pick-up zone in the intelligent car park. After the customer has finished with the car, it's simply a matter of returning it to a drop-off zone and sending the car on its way with a command sent via the smartphone app.

But once again, the hardware seems like it can only cope with low speed manoeuvring – and in a carefully defined area, at that. Is it reasonable to presume that processing speed has a lot of catching up to do before we'll see autonomous cars capable of parking the way Russ Swift does?