Dear Fellow Xk8/Xkr enthusiasts,
After years of research, development, and every penny I ever saved (and much I borrowed), my partners and I have just parked the first car in our very first fully automated parking structure that is part of an apartment complex we are building in Sherman Oaks, CA (literally an hour ago). We lowered it on the lift into the subterranean level (there are also 3 levels above grade), where it was shuttled into a space at the end of the structure. While there are numerous automated structures scattered across the world, ours is the first as part of an apartment building and the only one that uses bolt together (like an erector set) structural steel with no welding and no concrete decks. When the building and the structure are completed next month, we will be videotaping and photographing the structure for promotional and press releases that will be sent all over the world as we attempt to sell these systems. My 2002 XKR as well as my other sports cars will be pictured entering and exiting the structure, and any other local XKR owners (or any other interesting cars) who would like to be included in the photos or videos can contact me, and I'll let you know the dates we'll be shooting. It is essentially valet parking without the valet, where you pull up to the building, get out of your car, and it is whisked away automatically and parked in a secured structure, sort of on a shelf. When you're ready to leave, you wave a key fob at a sensor (like a Mobil Speedpass) and your car is delivered facing out so that there is no backing up within approximately 30 seconds. (Try getting a valet attendant to deliver a car that fast). Like a proud parent, I just had to share with my XK friends.

 

Wow, that's very cool. As an engineer myself I can appreciate the elegance of such a system. If I live in LA, I'd give it a go. Congratulations!

Mark

 

Hey, that's neat! I'm in San Diego, maybe I can come take a look.

Congratulations on your achievement.

Steve

 

Hey guys, thanks very much. It has been five years since we started this venture, and to actually see it function from a concept we had for another building (that we still have yet to build) is quite a thrill.

We have had hundreds of projects submitted to us for evaluation and hopefully now that we have a working prototype that potential buyers can see operate in a real system setting, both below and above grade, we will finally make this a profitable venture.

Our system uses 40-45% of the space of a conventional structure, so it makes some unbuildable projects (because of parking requirements) very feasible. We have also continued to improve its efficiency so that it is priced very comparably if not less than conventional parking structures, all while being LEED Certified (The cars are never running while in the structure so there is no need to ventilate or pump emissions out of the structure.)

Steve, if you'd like to come up and see it, just give me a call at (818) 402-7486, and I'll give you the tour. Our offices are only about 3 blocks away, and I live about 8 blocks from the building.

I can't wait to put my XKR, my Pantera, my GTO, and my 280z in there for the pictures. The funny thing is I think there will be a market for car collectors for these systems in addition to the obvious residential and commercial applications.

We also envision drydock boat storage and self and container storage usage as well. And Mark,
we are evaluating about a dozen projects in Texas right now and expect that one of these projects will become one of our first sales.

I'll keep you informed as to where it might be when it happens. Again, thanks.

 

Hey--you wouldn't be associated with Dasher Lawless would you?

Doug

 

Looks great - if you could include a full Jaguar service and fault code analysis with the parking fee you would have it made.

 

Congratulations on a successful outcome to a big investment and commitment. Look forward to seeing the video of the launch event.

Graham

 

Hey Doug,
Dasher Lawless is the construction company of my partner in this (and half a dozen other) ventures. Christopher is away racing cars this week at Spring Mountain (I was supposed to be with him, but Passover and work got in the way, this year), so he didn't even get to see the first event. But we weren't stupid, we put his electric car on the lift just in case something went wrong. For the "grand opening" and the video, we're putting all of our sports cars in the structure and then filming them coming out one by one. Can't wait!

 

Looks great, and 30 seconds retrieval time is excellent.

My only experience of something similar was in Japan and you always had to wait a few minutes for the car to show up.

 

I live not too far from Dallas. Let me know if you get any projects there, I'd love to see it in action.

Mark

 

Update! Late this afternoon, we put cars on the second and third floors of our first automated parking structure in Sherman Oaks. It works, thank goodness. The final programming will take place over the next couple of weeks, and our apartment building will be done by the end of the month, when we can finally clean up and put our cars in for the official video. I will be putting my XKR, my Pantera, my 280Z, and hopefully my GTO in the structure and in the video along with my partners' cars, afterwhich the video will be uploaded to our website to replace the animated video. It has been a long road getting here but the future looks bright as it appears we will have a contract to build a much larger (approx. 220 spaces) structure within the next month or two, and another structure of similar size sometime before the end of the year. I didn't get a chance to take pictures today, however, tomorrow I will take some and post them. Any other locals who want their cars memorialized in our first video, just let me know, and I'll arrange it.

 

Probably doesn't feel like it to you and your partners but that's impressive progress in less than three months since you posted details of parking your first car in this project.

Graham

 

Tberg, I've read with great interest as I see many others have too.

One point of note - your post was large block text which tends to put off a lot of people from reading such posts. I've edited one of your posts so you can see what I mean.

It looks to be a great story, a great achievement and I'm definitely subscribed......I want to see that video too.

Hopefully you can get a Jag or two coming out as well, that would be ultra cool

 

I didn't even realize until you pointed it out that you could change the text style, I just never looked. It was set to whatever the default style was, and I just didn't notice. Thanks for pointing it out. Some pictures later on this afternoon.!

 

No problem tberg - you've got a really cool story to tell and obviously want as many people to see it as possible, breaking up the text helps to achieve that.

Its now afternoon here.....where's the pics / videos??.....lol

 

We had to formulate 4 last minute brackets that will house 4 additional safety sensors, and they are being welded on right now. This afternoon PST, I will take some photos and some short video clips and upload when I get home. Stay tuned!

 

Looking forward to it.
Congratulations!

 

Okay, I promised photos and some video, so here they are. In the first still photo, you will see an electric car up on the third floor on top of an orange steel pallet. The second photo shows the bottom of the pallet which holds the car. It acts as the shelf and transport from the lift on the upper floors. Out of the 17 parking spaces that we have included in this 8 unit apartment, 6 are above grade, 3 on the second floor, 3 on the third floor. There are 2 tandem spaces on the east side of the lift and 1 single space on the west side of the lift on each of two floors. There are 11 spaces on the subterranean floor which are visible in the original posting. A car pulls into the structure on top of a pallet which is on top of the lift. Once the driver (and passengers and pets) exits the room, the garage door closes and the lift takes the car either up or down and automatically places the pallet with the car on it, essentially, in a shelf, where it stays until it is automatically retrieved by waving a small fob in front of a scanner/reader. The next post will have a video of the lift moving.

 

The video shows the lift moving to the second floor. It doesn't have a car on it right now because it was being used to transport some materials to the upper floors. Upon entering the structure and after all passengers, and pets (anything living) exit, the lift with the pallet on it, is turned 180 degrees, so that there is no backing out into traffic. The cars are automatically directed to an available parking space. On the subterranean level, the cars while on the pallet are transferred unto a moving shuttle that deposits the vehicle into an available space. More videos showing a car being lifted and deposited into a shelf/parking space will follow in the next couple of days.

After 2 hours of trying to upload the video including asking my youngest son who is a whiz kid at computer video (does it semi-professionally), I can't get the video to load. In the next few days when I have a better video, I'll put a link to a Youtube version. Stay tuned for daily updates.

 

Update! Well, although we don't have full power from the Dept. of Water and Power, yet (maybe another week of working of a generator), we have successfully loaded cars on the subterranean as well as the 2nd and 3rd floor levels and retrieved them without dropping anything. My XKR, Pantera, and 280Z have all been loaded, parked, shuttled, and retrieved. I have video, however, the files are too big to load. In about 12 days, we have a professional film crew coming to film, afterwhich, the edited final version will be uploaded to our website, and I will be able to link to it. Any local forum members who would like to have their cars memorialized in our first structure's public video are welcome to contact me, and I'm sure we can make it happen. Hopefully, now that we will have our prototype structure completed, we will be able to close some sales of these systems as developers, builders, and architects are able to see first hand that it works! Stay tuned.