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Exactly, i think this product is solving an airport problem and not a user problem. Whenever i park at an airport i always look for the shortest distance to terminal / price, then chose an option that lands within an acceptable range. Unless i'm way for very long shuttle-bus isn't really on the table.

Implementation is everything. If there’s enough capacity to drive up and drop your car off without queueing, and your car is ready to go as you leave the terminal then it sounds great. If there’s a half hour wait to get into the drop off zone, and another half hour wait after picking up your bags, and a half hour walk to the pickup/dropoff area then I’d prefer a 30 min shuttle.

I think this is solving the 'airport parking' problem my dad has. He drives to the airport, parks a mile or so away in some field and the company that owns the field drops him off at the terminal. He can leave his car there for the week.

This feels like a clever solution to have some spaces closer to the airport and many spaces further away.

Meanwhile their toilets are all completely down because of water supply failures[1]. A sad and funny juxtaposition.

1 - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/26/water-supply...

I guess the argument might be that it'll be faster than finding a spot. Slightly minor benefit is you don't need to remember where it's parked.

Well that’s the design / usability / real needs part. Which is what these projects often miss. I see often tech replacing parts of a workflow but in reality the process / flow remains the same. Now some parts are digital and we call this “progress”. Strictly speaking it’s digitization but not progress.

Article says one of the terminals is within walking distance

Yes, it doesn't make a lot of sense if you can't pull up close to the terminal and leave your car there for the robot to park. But I assume this is just a prototype/trial of the robot tech with a view to expanding it in the future. Presumably they didn't want the risk of broken down (or stuck/confused) parking robots clogging up the busy airport drop off area.

Not a problem for me, :) I always take a shuttle or an Uber to the airport from where I parked, which is 10-15 mins away, because parking at the airport(JFK, LaGuardia, Newark at least) is stupid expensive

The article says:

> The facility is within walking distance of the South Terminal, although a free shuttle bus is also available.

Think of it as picking the parking garage or lot you like, but skipping the hunt for an open spot.

As these things go, if the service provider is able to make step one work and the airport continues the partnership, an eventual step would indeed be coming closer to or at the terminal, and the robot scooters (sounds a little like scaled-up warehouse robots) would move the car to storage.

It's basically a larger version of P-Snurran they made in Stockholm back in 2023. It was like a CD changer for cars.

I will give you a reason why this might be useful. Not at Gatwick. (I always took the train when I lived in that area and usually ended up at Heathrow or Stanstead anyway). But at Raleigh NC for example, you have to go up 5 levels to find a spot, (I have never seen an open spot on levels 1-4) and spend about 10 minutes or more finding a spot after that, then walking from your spot to the elevator, then back out. Or sometimes the lot is filled up, and you have to drive to a lot far away, then spend even longer finding a spot that will be at the far end of the lot, then walking a good distance to the bus terminal.

That's if you know the system, and are aware that you won't find spots on the lower levels, and that the "x spots open" indicators are lying. If you're new, you can spend 30+ minutes on a goose chase, miss your flight etc.

This solves that problem; not the bus one. (If the drop-off location is easy to access; if not, then it's pointless)

It's more like valet parking except you lock your car and keep your keys. I guess enough people don't trust someone else driving their car.

especially disappointing as there is valet parking at Gatwick that works exactly like that

It’s exciting to invest in the future and not exciting to invest in infrastructure

Personally I wonder why didn't they put several Pater Noster parking machines instead.

Systems with eight slots have decent throughout, the same density as cars parked side-by-side and bumper-to-bumper - even including the space needed to roll out - and are mechanically simple compared to just about anything else in this space.

You give them the keys, then they go to the site to collect your item.

I can remote lock/unlock my car from an app, so I’m guessing this is what they are thinking about.

First thing I thought, too. Seems like mutually exclusive features.

I don't think car alarms detect these kinds of vibrations. It's specifically tilt and more impactful stuff. Certainly, the alarm is never going off when I get my car back via the lifts that I've used. It's probably too smooth.

I asked this once in the past, but...do car alarms actually stop any actual crime ever? My entire life, every time I've ever heard a car alarm go off, literally everyone around just rolls their eyes and ignores it. If I actually looked up at a car alarm and the person outside the car just said "I'm so sorry! You know how it is", I would probably just nod and move on without really taking the time to figure out if it was really their car (because even if they were breaking in I don't have any desire to risk an altercation with someone doing that, and even if I were inclined to call law enforcement, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't come do anything because some random car's alarm is going off).

I want to be open minded that I'm missing something, but I can't help but feel like car alarms are just security theater with a side of nose pollution.

Wow, who is subsidizing it?

That is pretty good pricing. I’m surprised. I wonder if this is just introductory pricing. It seems like there’s not much throughput for something like this. I can’t see how this could handle a constant stream of people wanting to park their cars.

It's the perfect juxtaposition of stories.

Seems it's becoming all too frequent in Kent and Sussex

More fun to spend millions on AI than fixing literal shit.

Since you have to book in advance, I guess you give them the number plate details. They can look it up online to see what kind of vehicle it is and can decline to book if too heavy. They can cross check the number plate when you arrive.

In the UK, pretty much zero. Nobody ever leaves their windows down when they leave their car.

Is parking with the windows open a normal thing to do in the UK?

The local car wash has lights that help you park the car pretty precisely under the wash robot. No rails or anything, you park right underneath the robot and it moves around and over the car. The robot doesn't start until you are in position.

IMO this would be a terrible idea to let the robots park cars in the same car park as humans. They most likely have a dedicated car park for this where ever car is parked by a robot.

The article says:

"A Stanley Robotics autonomous parking robot then slides underneath the vehicle, lifts it by its tyres and transports it to a secure storage area."

Which seems to suggest this.

You're behind the times. It's 10 pounds now.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lqd72d4lqo

£7 is about the price of a pint. Surely that’s worth it given the convenience of driving right up to the front door of the terminal?

My company used to cover a car service for us (limo), my door to the terminal.

When they set up the AirTrain, I stopped using the car service. It took longer, but I have always had a soft spot for mass transit, and I kind of got a kick out of boarding a train in Huntington, NY, and leaving the train, in Shinagawa.

But there is a train to Gatwick.

Yes, let's depend on a train for my time-sensitive journey with lots of awkward luggage.

Do you people even ride trains? Are you OK with the 50/50 odds of gettings home on time?

Yeah because I want to haul all my luggage on a train journey when I go to the airport. I’ll take a train to a lot of places but the airport is not one of them.

This technique is frequently used by towing companies impounding cars and reposession agents collecting cars for loan defaults - absolutely you can pick up and take a car away with the right hardware.

Just for most people a stolen locked car isn’t really of much uses.

Yes. If you can get under it.

Well if there are 100 cars waiting in line for the little garage to be available it defeats the purpose

> a car catches fire

That's a solved problem, drench the car in copious amounts of water and flush all oxygen with high pressure CO2 tanks.

There are some horror stories when those kind of systems break down.

For example this one is about a van which got stuck in one for two years: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx207jwknp5o

Or there was one in Sweden which trapped cars for 2 months: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/fnurret-pa-psnurran--m-vill-se-... (sorry, could only find a swedish source)

It is because these kind of systems are complicated bespoke automation. When it breaks down it costs a fortune to fix it. And what can happen is that different parties (operators vs manufacture vs maintainer) gets into a contract dispute to see who is liable to pay to get it fixed. Which as you can guess can take years to play out. Meanwhile your vehicle is stuck and nobody who could is interested in spending a penny on getting it out.

In contrast to that this project is better in two ways. There are multiple robots. (or at least there really should be) So if one breaks down the other robots can still retrieve cars (albeit of course with reduced throughput). And because the storage is just a flat parking lot if all the robots give up the ghost at the same time humans can drive out the cars from the edges of the storage rows.

Where was this? I've only seen it in London at very high end residential places. Even then it's rare. Most privately-owned public car parks in London are dilapidated and full of thieves, but still command premium pricing. It would surprise me if one bothered to build the infra for this.

I don’t think they’re mechanically simpler. Those kinds of underground garages probably require a lot of maintenance to keep running.

A fenced off flat parking lot with a few cameras here and there. Not sure what you expect.

You can see it on Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MQjWHbbc5jeUryGU7?g_st=ic

If you knew what it looked like, it wouldn't be as secure!

Not the best example...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQQlREtqAM8

As far as I understand, first one Ocado robot went on fire, it doesn't have a sensor for fire so it kept going. Neither do its neighbours, who pass right by it and catch fire themselves. And so it keeps going until everything is on fire.

Why even go to the airport? Take the train to where you are going.

I doubt the robots have sufficient enough traction/mobility to navigate on any surface that isn't reasonably smooth like tarmac. Also I'd wager the car park the robots go to isn't that far away from the drop off location, most likely on the same land owned by the airport.