It seems that the mechanical parking spaces that everyone is clamoring for are really going to be abandoned by the market. A while ago, Tongheng Planning and Design Institute of Tsinghua University, together with the Parking Equipment Working Committee of the China Heavy Machinery Industry Association and the Urban Parking Professional Committee of the China Municipal Association, issued a white paper on the development of China's parking industry in 2024.
It said that domestic sales of mechanical parking equipment and the number of new parking spaces each year have experienced four consecutive years of decline starting in 2020, falling to less than half of their peak.
In other words, in the past four or five years, the attractiveness of three-dimensional parking spaces to developers, which can be found in shopping malls and residential areas across the country, is rapidly disappearing.
Looking at the avalanche market, Jing Xiaobo, executive vice chairman of the China Heavy Machinery Industry Association, raised his arms and shouted last year, saying that the industry must increase research and development efforts, improve product competitiveness, and then look for opportunities in exports.
Otherwise, the development prospects of the mechanical parking space industry will be quite worrying!
But I don’t know why, but my first reaction after seeing this news was: I have finally waited for this day.
As long as people disenchant their mechanical parking spaces earlier, I won’t spend money on repairing the wheels every year.
It’s not just me. Regardless of their driving experience, car enthusiasts on major social platforms will probably spit out sweet words when mentioning mechanical parking spaces. The remaining one has never parked in a mechanical parking space.
The reason why everyone is shouting is inseparable from the extremely anti-human design of the mechanical parking space.
Just looking at the name, many friends who don’t drive often may not know what a mechanical parking space is, but everyone should have seen it in the basements of shopping malls and communities.
Just like the photo below, our common mechanical parking spaces are usually double-layered, side-by-side iron plates, called lifting and transverse mechanical parking spaces.
Relying on chains and tracks, it can park 5 cars on the ground that could only park 3 cars. The working process is roughly like this. It's quite cool to talk about it.
But the problem is that this thing really can't be parked by humans.
On the outside of the mechanical parking space, we can usually find a plate like this, which stipulates the vehicle body size supported by the mechanical parking space. The above will most likely say that the length of the vehicle does not exceed 5 meters, the width does not exceed 1.85 meters, and the weight does not exceed 2 tons.
Everything else is fine, but what drives people crazy the most is the 1.85-meter width limit.
You should know that the width of marked parking spaces is generally about 2.5 meters. In comparison, the mechanical parking space is not only much narrower, but also has to be tilted straight in. If there is a slight deviation, you have to wait for the wheel hub to be repaired.
Why, because the two sides of the mechanical parking space are not white lines that don't matter if they are pressed, but two hard square steels.
What's even worse is that the width of 1.85 meters is not much wider than a common family car.
In addition, new energy vehicles are becoming wider and wider, and even the 532 body has become a selling point (5 meters long, 3 meters wheelbase, 2 meters wide). Except for relatively small oil trucks, people basically look like this after parking in mechanical parking spaces.
Compared to the comfort of making corrections as you go in a marked parking space, parking in a mechanical parking space makes your palms sweaty in order to prevent the wheels from getting stained.
But it is this very difficult mechanical parking space that has begun to appear more and more frequently in our lives in the past ten years. It can be seen in shopping mall basements, hospital basements, residential basements and even open-air parking lots.
Many people say that the reason behind the spread of mechanical parking spaces is the policy. When each parking lot is built, there is an indicator for the proportion of mechanical parking spaces, which is why the spread of mechanical parking spaces is so fast.
But in fact, this statement is only half correct.
Looking at the requirements of different cities, we can find that the policy does require the number of parking spaces that new buildings should have.
For example, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, where Brother Neck is located, has implemented a new version of "Urban Construction Engineering Parking Lot (Warehouse) Setting Rules and Construction Indicator Standards" DBJ33/T 1021-2023 since March 1, 2024.
It stipulates that each new residential building must be equipped with a minimum of 0.7 parking spaces and a maximum of 2.2 parking spaces depending on the average area. Newly built shopping malls must have at least 0.4 parking spaces for every 100m² of shopping mall area.
There are also catering and entertainment, office buildings, theaters, hotels, etc., which also have corresponding minimum parking space requirements.
But for mechanical parking spaces, the policy not only does not include any words indicating the minimum proportion that should be used, but also shows a less supportive attitude.
For example, Hangzhou mentioned in another supplementary implementation details that newly built residential buildings cannot use mechanical parking spaces, even if they are used in shopping malls, they cannot exceed 30%, and other buildings cannot use more than 50%.
If there is nothing wrong with the policy, then the problem must be its implementation.
Precisely because the policy has relatively strict requirements for supporting parking spaces, many developers simply do not prepare so many parking spaces when planning to build buildings.
If you want to meet the rigid requirements and pass the acceptance of the competent department, the area cannot be larger, so you can only choose a three-dimensional garage to add parking spaces out of thin air.
There is actually nothing wrong with this. After all, we cannot require every developer to be able to build parking spaces on four or five floors underground. But the problem is that this trend of using mechanical parking spaces to meet the standard has changed a bit as it spreads.
Take mechanical parking spaces for example. Because parking and operating the device are both difficult, it is generally necessary to have auxiliary operators to help parking car owners check the left and right gaps, and then operate the machine to lift the car up.
But now, due to maintenance costs, most shopping malls that use mechanical parking spaces not only do not have corresponding staff, but many damaged parking spaces are not even repaired.
On the one hand, this means that the mechanical parking spaces we encounter in shopping malls are not three-dimensional at all. They are essentially flat parking spaces that cannot move and are very difficult to park.
On the other hand, due to lack of maintenance and upkeep, we can often see examples of hardware failures in three-dimensional parking spaces, causing vehicles to fall down.
Don't tell me that the postures are quite unified.
For this reason, some more ruthless shopping malls have even developed a temporary countermeasure to deal with acceptance inspections.
For example, in an interview with Southern Weekend, Sun Xiaobo, president of the Hubei Provincial Parking Industry Association, said that there used to be developers who would rent equipment or just build a mechanical rack, agreeing on a parking space for 3,000 yuan or 5,000 yuan, and then take it away after inspection and acceptance.
The combination of the above circumstances has turned the mechanical parking spaces that were originally used to alleviate the shortage of parking space into just a means of coping with policies.
In the end, instead of alleviating the parking problem, it created a series of new problems.
It’s no wonder that the sales of mechanical parking spaces have not been very good in recent years, right? Users don’t buy it, and developers only use it to meet the acceptance and flawless maintenance. Even if they are used, it will only leave a bad impression on people visiting shopping malls.
For this reason, many parking lots that previously had mechanical parking spaces have now dismantled the devices and restored them to ordinary marked parking spaces.
But then again, is it really the mechanical parking space itself that people criticize?
I don't think so.
Many cities have these handsome three-dimensional garages. As long as you drive your car into the wide door, the device will automatically help you put your car up and park it.
Not only were people not disgusted, but they rushed to check in. Because these mechanical parking spaces are not built for construction, they can indeed solve the problem of insufficient parking spaces and make parking more convenient.
If the mechanical parking space in the future allows me to see a picture like this when I pick up the car,
I will always be a huge fan of it.
