With Ford’s ParkingSpotter technology quickly evolving, BMW looks to launch its own version of the technology.

Their “research project,” dubbed Dynamic Parking Prediction (DPP), is already able to predict the availably of parking spaces using movement data from vehicle fleets. Here’s how DPP works:

• Thousands of vehicles from a test fleet supplied anonymous movement data generated when looking for and occupying parking spaces.
• Based on digital mapping, “the local prediction algorithm and the parking data from the fleet vehicles, the research application calculates current parking options in a given area, for example a particular part of town”
• From this information, the number of currently vacant parking spaces and the number of drivers looking for parking are factored into a calculation giving drivers accurate information about space availability.

The DriveNow fleet vehicles the BMW Group is continuing to collect data to enhance DPP’s real-time usability.