"To help end the blind search for a parking gap in crowded city streets, Mercedes-Benz cars will start giving each other a heads-up when a space is free," said Elisabeth Behrmann at Bloomberg. The luxury automaker is testing a pilot program in Stuttgart, Germany, that uses the Mercedes E-Class sedan's built-in ultrasound sensors to spot available parking spots while driving.
The car's sensors scan for empty spaces big enough to park in, even when a driver isn't looking for one. It then transmits that information to the cloud, to be shared with other Mercedes drivers. Initially, the system will share the probability of finding a parking spot on a particular street or block. But eventually it will be able to display a digital parking map to drivers showing the exact location and size of nearby available spaces.
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