DETROIT – Parking is an issue that is especially important in the city of Detroit as there is not enough of it.
Local 4 looked inside a building aimed at changing how cities work, and parking is a significant part of that.
The Detroit Smart Parking Lab is tucked away just outside of downtown Detroit on West Lafayette. It’s a five-story, fully functional parking garage owned by Dan Gilbert. It also has a unique first floor.
EVs are coming, so they are testing things like floor-mounted smart charging pads and EV chargers attached to city light poles.
Lidar is the computer technology used for self-driving vehicles that knows people from trees; it also works in a garage.
The endgame idea behind it is to create a parking garage where you notify it you are arriving on a phone app, pull up, get out, walk away, and the garage will store your vehicle with no one behind the wheel.
Then, there’s the option to have an automated charging unit come and plug in your vehicle. Bedrock’s Senior Urban Strategy Director, Kevin Mull, runs the place.
“Autonomous vehicles need to rely on infrastructure, EV vehicles need to rely on charging infrastructure that gets deployed in a built environment so for bedrock the opportunity to collaborate on the ground in one of our own properties in a real-world environment, this is very unique,” said Mull
And helping local businesses like elevated parking, owned by Don Jagoda and his wife, make highly efficient stacking technology a reality.
“For us being a local company to come down here from our homes and work with companies like Ford and Bosch and Bedrock and test actual applications in the state of Michigan, is offering grants as well to allow the city has been tremendous,” said Jagoda.
They opened the lab two years ago and held an open house Tuesday (Nov. 14) to show off what they do to try to attract still more companies.