Navigating in tight parking garages

[TahoeMichael]

I just had my Toyota Highlander in an extremely tight condo building's parking garage in San Francisco. It made me wonder how easily the Gravity would have been to park, given it's a bit wider and longer. For those with a Gravity, how much confidence does the 3D surround view monitoring give you when in a tight urban parking garage? Do you feel comfortable that you can see the surrounding obstructions clearly? Do you feel like it gives the confidence to get to within an inch or two of clearance when trying to fit through tight spaces? I know that the Gravity has the rear wheel steering, which will help as well.

 

[9point81]

I just had my Toyota Highlander in an extremely tight condo building's parking garage in San Francisco. It made me wonder how easily the Gravity would have been to park, given it's a bit wider and longer. For those with a Gravity, how much confidence does the 3D surround view monitoring give you when in a tight urban parking garage? Do you feel comfortable that you can see the surrounding obstructions clearly? Do you feel like it gives the confidence to get to within an inch or two of clearance when trying to fit through tight spaces? I know that the Gravity has the rear wheel steering, which will help as well.

So far I feel pretty confident with it. The vehicle is very maneuverable in small spaces and the cameras are really good at showing everything. Of course I still get nervous with the very new and shiny vehicle, but so far it has shined at these things.

 

[DeaneG]

I just had my Toyota Highlander in an extremely tight condo building's parking garage in San Francisco. It made me wonder how easily the Gravity would have been to park, given it's a bit wider and longer. For those with a Gravity, how much confidence does the 3D surround view monitoring give you when in a tight urban parking garage?...

On my Air (and Volvo), the 360 cams make a huge difference in tight parking situations. It's better that having someone get out of the car to spot. Saves a lot of time and worry. I'm hoping that Gravity eventually gets a "transparent vehicle" setting, à la Range Rover etc, to eliminate the small remaining blind spots near the corners.

 

[borski]

So far I feel pretty confident with it. The vehicle is very maneuverable in small spaces and the cameras are really good at showing everything. Of course I still get nervous with the very new and shiny vehicle, but so far it has shined at these things.

It’s really pretty good. Admittedly, last night at 2am I made Annie park it in the very tight Tahoe garage, but that was mostly because I figured if it does get scratched, she should be the first one to do it.

 

[TahoeMichael]

On my Air (and Volvo), the 360 cams make a huge difference in tight parking situations. It's better that having someone get out of the car to spot. Saves a lot of time and worry. I'm hoping that Gravity eventually gets a "transparent vehicle" setting, à la Range Rover etc, to eliminate the small remaining blind spots near the corners.

So there is a place at each corner that the 3D visualization doesn't show? If I understand you right, missing the corners would seem to be a key gap in coverage for maneuvering in tight spaces.

 

[borski]

So there is a place at each corner that the 3D visualization doesn't show? If I understand you right, missing the corners would seem to be a key gap in coverage for maneuvering in tight spaces.

It shows corners, but you can’t see through the car. Lucid has mentioned this in their future features.

 

[TahoeMichael]

It shows corners, but you can’t see through the car. Lucid has mentioned this in their future features.

Hmm. I'm having a bit of a hard time visualizing that. I think for tight parking garages, you might not want a transparent/translucent view of the car, because it could make it harder to judge whether something was an inch or two away from hitting. For my scenario, I'd think the best would be a top-down visualization that clearly showed the car, and the surroundings with enough detail to manage 1-2" clearance with confidence. But as I haven't seen the see-through-car version in person, maybe I just don't understand how cool that would be.

 

[Elfin]

One thing to be aware of with four wheel steering is that the rear end swings out and can hit things. The maximum rear angle on the Gravity is pretty small so it's probably not a big risk.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Don’t have my Gravity yet but test drove two of them and it was noticeably easier to park than my Air and easier to park than any other SUV I’ve driven.

 

[TahoeMichael]

Don’t have my Gravity yet but test drove two of them and it was noticeably easier to park than my Air and easier to park than any other SUV I’ve driven.

Yeah, my order has rear wheel steering, and I anticipate it'll result in great maneuverability. Though I still want to see if I'm about to scrape a concrete column in a tight garage.

 

[Ron_Burgundy]

Rear wheel steering is very helpful, though it’s a minor amount if movement (it think it’s three degrees max).

I find the Gravity is super conservative with respect to auto braking when I am backing up or moving forward. I know I could change it to “late”, but I am afraid it will be too late!

It’s pretty easy to park. Especially compared to our R1S. Even our X for that matter. I went to do a u turn in our X yesterday at a place the Gravity can do with ease and had to stop, back up, etc. I was actually surprised but I am spoiled by the gravity now.

 

[allenmhc]

Rear wheel steering is very helpful, though it’s a minor amount if movement (it think it’s three degrees max).

I find the Gravity is super conservative with respect to auto braking when I am backing up or moving forward. I know I could change it to “late”, but I am afraid it will be too late!

It’s pretty easy to park. Especially compared to our R1S. Even our X for that matter. I went to do a u turn in our X yesterday at a place the Gravity can do with ease and had to stop, back up, etc. I was actually surprised but I am spoiled by the gravity now.

Interesting that you mention that—going through my delivery orientation today, the rep. pointed out specifically that the delivery team sets the auto-braking setting to "late" themselves because they know it's conservative and annoying.

 

[TahoeMichael]

I had a test drive at Millbrae last Friday. The surround view seems like it might not actually give much confidence when navigating a tight path through an urban parking garage. I didn't get a chance to actually try that scenario, but I did notice two things:

1. The visualization is a bit small, so if you're trying to get the car within a couple of inches of something but not hit it, there isn't enough resolution in the visualization to judge that.
2. The visualization is unclear on where things actually are. At the end of the drive, I parked against a red curb outside the Lucid Studio. The visualization showed the stripe of the red curb, but it was in a different location in front of the car than it was next to the car. Obviously the visualization is stitching together multiple camera views, but it seemed to not quite know how to compensate when stitching an image from a right front camera view to a right side camera view. The resulting offset in the visualization was just about the width of the top of the red curb, so probably 3-4 inches. I suppose over time I'll learn which parts of the visualization are accurate and which are not. But it'd be better to not have to learn that.

All that said, the Lucid employee riding shotgun had clearly never had anyone ask about navigating through tight multi-car garages, and there could easily have been a better setting in the display that she didn't know about. There were definitely other things about the Gravity that she didn't know.

 

[Ron_Burgundy]

I notice the rear steering on u turns, but it really in tight parking spaces. It’s awesome to have, but I don’t think it makes a noticeable difference in tight areas.

 

[allenmhc]

I had a test drive at Millbrae last Friday. The surround view seems like it might not actually give much confidence when navigating a tight path through an urban parking garage. I didn't get a chance to actually try that scenario, but I did notice two things:

1. The visualization is a bit small, so if you're trying to get the car within a couple of inches of something but not hit it, there isn't enough resolution in the visualization to judge that.
2. The visualization is unclear on where things actually are. At the end of the drive, I parked against a red curb outside the Lucid Studio. The visualization showed the stripe of the red curb, but it was in a different location in front of the car than it was next to the car. Obviously the visualization is stitching together multiple camera views, but it seemed to not quite know how to compensate when stitching an image from a right front camera view to a right side camera view. The resulting offset in the visualization was just about the width of the top of the red curb, so probably 3-4 inches. I suppose over time I'll learn which parts of the visualization are accurate and which are not. But it'd be better to not have to learn that.

All that said, the Lucid employee riding shotgun had clearly never had anyone ask about navigating through tight multi-car garages, and there could easily have been a better setting in the display that she didn't know about. There were definitely other things about the Gravity that she didn't know.

So the curb rash feature was something that they touted in some of the intro videos, but as far as I can tell is not ready for prime time and enabled in our cars. It doesn't fully solve the 360° warping issues, but after not having it in my Teslas for the past…4 years, getting that view back already feels like a win.

 

[L-Dude]

My last car had rear wheel steering and it made a very noticeable difference in parking. I am still struggling to get my Air into parking spaces perfectly, and I've had it for three months. It is about the only feature from my old car that I miss in my Air. (FWIW, I had HUD on my old car and I don't miss that a bit.)

 

[Ron_Burgundy]

So the curb rash feature was something that they touted in some of the intro videos, but as far as I can tell is not ready for prime time and enabled in our cars. It doesn't fully solve the 360° warping issues, but after not having it in my Teslas for the past…4 years, getting that view back already feels like a win.

SC told me curb rash detection or whatever it’s called is a future update. It’s not even in my top 10, so I am not concerned. Stable software first.

 

[borski]

SC told me curb rash detection or whatever it’s called is a future update. It’s not even in my top 10, so I am not concerned. Stable software first.

It works perfectly on the Air, so I have no doubt it’ll come to Gravity.

 

[TahoeMichael]

My last car had rear wheel steering and it made a very noticeable difference in parking. I am still struggling to get my Air into parking spaces perfectly, and I've had it for three months. It is about the only feature from my old car that I miss in my Air. (FWIW, I had HUD on my old car and I don't miss that a bit.)

I did a tight u-turn in my test drive, and was impressed. My expectation is that will go a long way towards enabling the Gravity to handle the tight condo garage I use in SF. It's a very tight fit with my 192.5" long by 75.8" width Highlander, and the Gravity 5.7" longer and 3.1" wider. The parking space itself is long enough, it's just the path through the garage that's a problem.