Volkswagen Marks Ten Years of Park Assist in the Middle East

It has been ten years since Volkswagen introduced the Park Assist feature, the first automated parking aid in the automobile, in the the Middle East. The feature which initially supported a maximum of two moves for parallel parking and a clearance requirement of ‘the vehicle length plus 1.40meters’, has now evolved into one that has become the driver’s best friend, especially for those who struggle on a daily basis with the tight parking spaces that are available in cities. The Park Assist feature first arrived in the Middle East in 2007 with the Tiguan and made everyday driving a lot easier, especially for novices.

Commenting on the Park assist feature, Andrew Savvas, Brand Director Volkswagen Middle East said that Volkswagen engineers made it their mission to use pioneering technologies to solve the universally common frustration of parking. Over the past ten years, Park Assist has developed from a feature with limited options to a fully-fledged, affordably innovative assistant that makes th entire parking experience hassle free.

It was first introduced in the Volkswagen Touran in 2006, and supported the driver by automatically making the correct steering wheel movements to take the ideal line to park. The Park Assist feature automatically took care of the measurement of the parking space, the assignment of the starting position and the required steering movements. All the driver had to do was accelerate and brake.

By 2010, the Park Assist feature enabled quicker parking in spaces lengthwise. In 2012, the option of parking at right-angles to the road was added. With the use of even more complex algorithms, the 12 ultrasonic sensors on the vehicle made it possible to assess the environment continually, reducing the area of buffer space needed down to 90 centimeters.

Generation 3.0 which was introduced in 2015 included an additional feature for  forward parking, thus covering all aspects of parking. Park Assist now only requires only 80 centimetres of ‘elbow room’ to help steer the driver into a parking space. An “emergency brake” is also now available though drivers cannot entirely depend on this to eliminate parking accidents. It does help to limit the extent of the damage in the event of an impact.

Many changes have been made in the cockpit also, in the past ten years. Earlier, there was only a simple depiction of the environment which allowed a maximum of six objects. This has been replaced by a digital map calculated by an intelligent system that of the detailed environment and the swing out area.

The Park Assist function is available in the Golf, CC and Tiguan Volkswagen models.