It appears that Volkswagen wants to help drivers park in the shade after CarMoses uncovered a patent by VW filed with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) that uses a “shadow swarm map” to find people shaded parking spots in sunny weather.
Potentially very useful in regions that get lots of sunlight, such as Australia, Spain, and the Middle East, and US states including Texas, Nevada, and Arizona, this technology has the potential to significantly improve comfort levels and reduce energy consumption.
Sun Damage And Heat Soak
In overly sunny areas, motorists are dealing with the discomfort and inconvenience of heat-soaked cars that have been parked in the sun on a daily basis. Not only does parking in the sun degrade vehicle paint and interiors more quickly, but steering wheels and seats can be scalding to the touch, and air-conditioning systems have to work overtime to cool the vehicle interior down, contributing to higher energy needs and increased fuel consumption.
VW’s CARIAD software division is hoping to develop such functionality and integrate it into the VW Group’s vehicles as the user experience in modern cars become increasingly important.
How It Works
Using static information from the weather services, base maps, and other vehicles, a vehicle’s navigation system can create a real-time map to predict and display potentially shaded parking spots based on various inputs. The combined data can be used to build a comprehensive dataset of ideal parking conditions.
This is some of the information the system gathers to identify suitable parking spots:
- Region where the vehicle is operated
- Time of year and day
- Temperature
- Light intensity
- Topographical features
- Locations of buildings
This system is just another application of the increasingly common V2X (vehicle-to-everything) technology through which vehicles can build an awareness of the conditions around them through networking with surrounding vehicles and infrastructure. This enables the vehicle to output useful information, in this case shaded parking spots at a particular location to improve the motorist’s comfort and convenience, and reduce the use of the climate control and energy.
