Photo: bmw
At the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, BMW and ParkNow introduced a new way of paying for parking and even reserving your spot in advance. The system has been around for quite some time now but what’s new is how you’re paying for the service.
Reserving parking spots can be done using your PC or smartphone for now but BMW wants to allow you to do so from the comfort of your car, while on the go in the near future. That will be done using an app integrated into your car’s iDrive system.
In the meantime, using the means you have at your disposal today, you can filter nearby car parks by price, distance or availability of services (such as car washes or charging stations). Once you made your choice, you can enter the destination in the navigation system and you’ll be directed to the car park where the spot you reserved is waiting for you.
There are two benefits to using such systems. First of all you don’t have to torture yourself trying to find an empty spot, losing valuable time in the process. Second, the pollution rate goes down by a significant margin.
As far as the paying system is concerned, things are even better now. Parking spots reserved on the street don’t require paying at a meter using change anymore. All the customer has to do is enter the number of the parking zone in the ParkNow app or the navigation system and the parking process starts.
Before the time you paid for expires, you are notified and you can either extend the parking time using your phone, presence near the car not being required.
Overall, the ParkNow system includes 8.4 million parking spaces across the US alone, 5.6 million of them being located in multistorey car parks while 2.8 million are on-street parking spaces in more than 200 cities.
In the meantime, using the means you have at your disposal today, you can filter nearby car parks by price, distance or availability of services (such as car washes or charging stations). Once you made your choice, you can enter the destination in the navigation system and you’ll be directed to the car park where the spot you reserved is waiting for you.
There are two benefits to using such systems. First of all you don’t have to torture yourself trying to find an empty spot, losing valuable time in the process. Second, the pollution rate goes down by a significant margin.
As far as the paying system is concerned, things are even better now. Parking spots reserved on the street don’t require paying at a meter using change anymore. All the customer has to do is enter the number of the parking zone in the ParkNow app or the navigation system and the parking process starts.
Before the time you paid for expires, you are notified and you can either extend the parking time using your phone, presence near the car not being required.
Overall, the ParkNow system includes 8.4 million parking spaces across the US alone, 5.6 million of them being located in multistorey car parks while 2.8 million are on-street parking spaces in more than 200 cities.
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