Making cars increasingly easy to park
For many years now, Renault has been equipping its vehicles with driver-assistance systems to make it easier for people to park their vehicle. The first step in this direction came in the 1990s/2000s with the parking sensor, firstly for reversing at the back of the vehicle, then we added the system at the front as well. “You no longer needed to get out of the car to see if there’s still space left to park,” smiled Pape.A few years later, the rear parking camera, and sometimes even a 360° camera offering a ‘bird’s eye view’, came in to complete the parking assist systems. “In addition to the beeping noise, drivers now got to see the position of obstacles displayed on the multimedia screen fitted on the car’s dashboard,”
When Easy Park Assist was first fitted on the Espace 5 in 2015, “we entered a new era,” said Pape. When the driver activates the option, the vehicle finds a parking space in which it will fit and calculates the steering itself, taking control of the wheel, leaving it up to the driver to simply control the vehicle’s acceleration, braking and gear changes from reverse to drive as well as the hand brake.