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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

Plus some sort of vertical parking elevator starts to become much more reasonable. They already exist but when the whole thing is 100% automated including the car you could get more parking out of the vertical space then you do with a current garage.

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It'll be possible to pack them way, way more tightly if a) the structure itself is able to move the cars around at will, and b) you can give it an estimate of what time you'll be back (or 30 mins notice for the "standby" option).

Excellent point. I hadn’t even thought of all the driving lanes and ramps that you no longer need.

At that point, it's less of a parking structure and more of an automated valet service. You get out of your car and only your car enters.

Taken to the limit of the idea, the whole parking structure could be entirely sealed to the outside, and maybe even evacuated or filled with a non-oxygenated medium (e.g. nitrogen) to prevent car fires and reduce rusting from long-term storage. Sort of like a modern grain silo.

My line of thought started from, "what would the world be like if every vehicle had a built-in valet?" I think the design of commercial areas would change dramatically within a couple decades, even just from the effect on parking.

How much would such a system cost to build and maintain, and how safe would it be re: vagrants, children? You’d be able to handle more customers of course, but would it compensate for the costs?

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