Volkswagen Commercial Vehicle's Park Assist Goes Pitted Against Stunt Driver

Everyone knows how driving a small vehicle in small, tight spaces can be difficult. Now, if you make the vehicle bigger, then the challenge becomes even greater.

This is true everywhere--even in the U.K. Almost a third of British van drivers rank small parking spaces as one of the biggest challenges in their driving careers. In fact, UK van drivers are fined an average of £24 million ($31 million) a year for parking incorrectly.

This is something that Volkswagen takes all in stride with their innovative Park Assist Technology. The company is so confident of this feature that they've challenged parking world record holder and professional stunt driver, Alastair Moffatt to put it to the ultimate test.

To see if Park Assist can park perfectly every time, Alastair used his 25 years of experience against the technology by completing a parallel park within a space of 7.5 meters--all using the handbrake turn to perform the maneuver. The result was quite impressive, with both competitors doing a perfect park each timie. The difference, however, is that the Park Assist is much easier and more convenient to use.

You can watch the entire challenge here:

“Our Working With You brand promise is designed to help Volkswagen customers in all aspects of owning a van and part of that is offering class-leading technologies such as Park Assist," said Sarah Cox, head of marketing at Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.

“We want to help our customers park their vans in the safest and most accurate way so that they can avoid parking fines and reduce stress. The Park Assist technology was a perfect match for Professional Stunt Driver, Alastair Moffatt, and a slightly less hair-raising maneuver!”

Meanwhile, world record holder for the tightest single, double, triple and reverse parallel park Alastair Moffatt commented: “I was really impressed with how nimble the Volkswagen Crafter proved to be – handbrake turning such a big vehicle isn’t always easy. I’ve spent years mastering the art of parking but taking on Park Assist was still a real challenge because it was 100 per cent accurate every time. I really had to be on the top of my game to match it.”

Park Assist Technology allows semi-automatic maneuvering into any parking space parallel or even at right angles to the road. It can maneuver in and out of parallel parking spaces. And in the case of parking at right angles, the first models can not only do a reverse park, but also semi-automatic forward maneuvers.

The Park Assist feature can also do a full automatic steer when parking. All the driver needs to do is to operate the brakes and the accelerator to get it going.

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