When I test drove the SE, one feature I just had to try was the Parking Assistant. A car that parallel parks itself? No way! Since I’ve owned one, I haven’t found the feature to be really useful. My basic criticism is that the system doesn’t seem to identify smaller spaces as parking spaces. I guess that makes sense: if I think I can squeeze into a spot with a handful of adjustments, maybe the car can’t see it that way. So, thus far, I’ve only demonstrated the feature to family and friends, with overly large spots that one doesn’t even strictly need to parallel park to get in to. Then. Last night. My wife was driving. She pulled up to a spot (not tiny, but not huge). She asked me about the parking thing. I flipped the switch and…. the car identified the parking space! I couldn’t believe it! My wife followed the instructions… it made a couple of adjustments…. And it did it! I should have taken a picture. It was glorious.
That's good to hear - I'm looking forward to trying this feature out. The mini will be our 'city car' and we go downtown fairly regularly so certainly will get use. Primarily I'm hoping it keeps me from getting too close to the curb and scratching the black rims.
I’m just a little wary of these systems. None of them are perfect. They will damage the car, if you let them. Plus there is a tendency to become a little dependent on them. I rely on the 360 camera in my other car so much that when it fails to initiate I’m left there like a noob trying to park the car for the first time. From a tech perspective it’s a lot of fun to experience these things though.
Have you (or any other forum members) heard horror stories about autonomous parking systems damaging the car? I haven't. I googled for horror stories but only found horror stories about valet parking. I found this article describing how AAA determined self-parking cars do a better job than humans. I tried my SE's self-parking feature just once and found it scarier than a roller-coaster because I'm more used to roller-coasters.
Sure, here's one: https://x3.xbimmers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1615305 I've come across a lot of similar stories.
Damaging (curbing) wheels seem to be a common complaint that the owners manual warns about. Some tire/sizes give you some protection against this, so its usually wheels with lower profile sporty tires that get the most abuse.
I tried it out a lot last week by testing it in front of my house with plastic trash cans as "stand-ins" for cars. First note - it didn't work with trash cans. It seems it needs something more car-sized or car-shaped before it will recognize it as a space. Second, I was paranoid about it scraping the wheels, so I tried a lot of experiments. The one thing I noticed is that it does decide how close to park the car based mostly on where the vehicle is in front of the parking space; I don't think it actually can "see" the curb at all. So if the car in front of you is very narrow (or is tapered near the back) and is parked extremely close to the curb, or the street is curved, when the car backs in to the space you should stop it short of where you think it needs to turn to save your wheels. That's really the only critical maneuver the car does for you. After that it does a simple back and forth adjustment and it's pretty close to where you need it anyway. The biggest challenge I had was doing the maneuver while facing downhill on a slope. The car does not have "forward creep" where you can just let go of the brake pedal so it requires you gas it to move, and it can be tricky to gas very slowly while going uphill especially if the curb you are parking next to has a raised lip. I found myself lurching more than I would like, so that is worth practicing on a less busy street the first time you try it. Overall I like it; the only thing is that when it swings the car in, it can seem *really* close to the car in front of you. It might be good to watch someone else do it the first time with you standing outside the car so you can see it's not getting nearly as close to the front vehicle as it may seem from the driver's perspective.
Interesting. I did curb mine because I forgot in our old town village the curbs are awful and constantly cause issues with parking. So I'm in the market for matching black paint. Not bad, but I totally forgot to give extra room with the way the curbs are. Totally on me. Made me wonder if an auto park would be able to handle some of the "non average" types of curbs out there without issues.
Thanks to all for the responses! I was so paranoid I'd curb my Power Spoke rims that I never dared try the parking-assist feature until I put them in the basement and started driving around on some used Loop Spoke rims. The taller side-walls on the 16-inch tires bulge out more than the 17-inchers and help protect the rims from curbing. They also soften the blows dealt by Ann Arbor's pot-holed streets.
