There is a huge garage hidden in a 46-story luxury apartment building in Miami. Dozens of busy robots rush to and from parking spaces in the garage.
The futuristic 24/7 operation takes place in a 13-story garage and uses five car lifts, dozens of lasers and hundreds of barcodes embedded in the floor. By parking into one of the building’s five car parking spaces, residents can save valuable time searching for a space and instead hand their vehicle over to a robot valet, which will park the car.
Five parking spaces with self-service kiosks provide access to the building’s automated parking garage.
Ginger Monteleone
It all happens inside Brickell House, which has about 375 apartment homes and the largest and tallest automated parking system of its kind, according to ParkPlus, the company that built the home.
Autonomous parking is a growing trend in high-end real estate, with buildings from New York to Miami now equipped with kiosks, car lifts and parking robots. Prices start at $300,000 for a coveted spot in some of Manhattan’s luxury apartments. Meanwhile, a real estate agent represents a family Five-bedroom penthouse at Brickell House told CNBC that the $15 million asking price includes five parking spaces in the sci-fi building.
One of five car lifts within the automated parking system.
Ginger Monteleone
These modern parking facilities are part of the so-called smart parking market, which includes a wide range of solutions from automated parking to digital payment systems. According to data from Grand View Research, the global smart parking market will be worth US$6.5 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach US$30.16 billion by 2030, with the North American market accounting for the major share.
A ParkPlus representative told CNBC that U.S. demand for cutting-edge automated systems like the one at Brickell House is driven primarily by luxury residential projects in high-density urban metros, while car dealerships, hospitals, hotels, parking facilities, private Car collectors and private homes often opt for mechanical systems that are often less advanced.
The view from above one of the garage’s 13th floor car elevators.
Ginger Monteleone
Inside the world’s largest robotic parking system
The Brickell House garage is off-limits to humans and is controlled by 29 robots (also known as automated guided vehicles, or AGVs for short).
AGVs are essentially free-roaming, self-charging robotic parking vehicles that use vision systems, lifts and lasers to park and retrieve cars with precision. They are 12 feet long and 4 feet wide, with the steel platform just 10 inches off the ground.
Hidden beneath each powerful machine, which can carry cars weighing up to 6,000 pounds, are eight wheels, bright flashing lights and an electronic eye that reads bar codes embedded in the floor to provide guidance.
One system has 29 robotic parking lots, also known as automated guided vehicles (AGVs).
Ginger Monteleone
These nimble robots glide under vehicles and seemingly effortlessly transport them across floors and into and out of car lifts. They adhere to an elaborate division of labor: some AGVs only move cars in and out of elevators, other AGVs are tasked with dragging cars across floors and into points. Vehicles entering or exiting the system may be handled by up to three AGVs, passing vehicles from one robot colleague to another.
Since there is no need for people to enter or exit the vehicle, parking can be very precise, squeezing vehicles into spaces just 2 inches apart.
An AGV prepares to park a Ferrari in Brickell House’s automated parking system.
Ginger Monteleone
During CNBC’s tour of the ParkPlus system, Our team mounted a camera on a Ferrari 488 Spider and recorded the automated retrieval process. In less than four minutes, it moved from the ninth level of the garage to the ground floor bay.
According to ParkPlus, rigorous testing is crucial to the system’s operation and risk mitigation: the robots have proven that they can move 15 cars in and out of the garage in rapid succession for 40 hours without any problems.
Robot parking ROI
The cost of an automated system like the Brickell House varies from building to building, but Peter Manis, president of ParkPlus Florida, said it typically costs $20,000 to $80,000 per site.
That cost does not include the developer’s cost to build the building’s garage level. Manis declined to disclose the exact price of the system installed at the Brickell House, but the garage-sized parking capacity puts the price at between $8 million and $32 million, according to Manis’ estimated cost range.
An automated guided vehicle, or AGV, carries a Ferrari through the PARKPLUS parking system.
Ginger Monteleone
One of the main motivations for building developers to invest millions of dollars in parking lot automation is the system’s ability to maximize the use of valuable square footage. Manis told CNBC that in some cases, automated systems can optimize square footage three times better than older garages.
“You don’t have ramps, you don’t have turns, you don’t have two different lanes that you can squeeze together,” Manis said.
Better use of parking space could mean developers require fewer floors dedicated to vehicles, freeing up residential space and potentially boosting apartment sales.
The system’s two AGVs work together to retrieve a Mercedes from the autonomous parking system and transport it to the car lift.
Ginger Monteleone
High-tech parking and a multi-million dollar headache
Any new technology will naturally have some early pain points.
Palmer Luckey, the billionaire who founded virtual reality company Oculus VR and military weapons maker Anduril Industries, filed a lawsuit earlier this year claiming he was trapped in a private garage elevator.
Lackey purchased a mansion in Newport Beach, California, and converted it into a multi-story garage, complete with an elevator and scissor lift, to house his car collection. In a lawsuit filed against Lackey’s builder and subcontractors, the billionaire said the elevator “repeatedly stopped vertical movement without warning and trapped passengers inside.”
According to the documents, the mansion-turned-garage is now unusable and Lackey suffered “millions of dollars in damages, the exact amount of which will be proven at trial.”
Palmer Luckey Billionaire founder of Oculus VR and Anduril Industries
CNBC
In response, the builder’s attorney told CNBC that his client has filed a cross-complaint, arguing that the elevators and lifts were the responsibility of a specialized subcontractor and that Palmer personally approved the subcontractor’s construction of the elevators. The subcontractor, meanwhile, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit but did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Back in Miami, Brickell House also suffered from a parking nightmare that made headlines. In 2016, long before the new AGV system was installed, the condominium association filed a complaint against the building’s developers, saying the parking system never worked properly. Residents’ cars were reportedly stuck in the system, which was installed by a now-bankrupt parking company, and the garage was eventually closed, leaving the building without parking for years, according to the lawsuit.
“The failure of the (previous) system is the Achilles’ heel of our industry,” ParkPlus Group President Paul Bates said.
The jury awarded the condominium association more than $40 million, according to court documents. It remains one of the largest construction defect rulings in Florida history.
The condominium association, which declined to discuss past lawsuits with CNBC, also reportedly received a $32 million insurance settlement through the system.
For Bates, the new ParkPlus system installed at Brickell House starting in 2022 helps close a dark chapter in the autonomous parking space.
“Brickell House and these common concerns drive industry innovation, improve system reliability and focus on reducing risk,” Bates said.
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