Cars will soon tell you where free parking spaces are and let you pay using your dashboard

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Parking bay payments will soon be connected to in-car infotainment systems which could revolutionise the way motorists park in private and council spaces. Peter O’Driscoll, CEO of leading parking firm RingGo says cars will soon be able to warn drivers which car parks have spaces free and then lead them safely into a space.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, he said: “I do believe that in another ten years you will see another big shift in-car.

“You’ll probably find the phone channel pretty much gone and the app channel will be diminishing.

“Cars will navigate you to where you want to get to.

“Within our organisation, we have a subsidiary that maps parking spaces to see the availability. That will feed into the car dashboard.

“That will then navigate into your space, tell you when it’s free and then you pay to park with us, that will be the future.”

Data from the British Parking Association warning drivers spend an average of four days a year looking for space.

Many modern cars already have self-parking capabilities with some vehicles able to steer drivers safely in and out of tight bays without any hassle.

Cars such as the new Ford Fiesta also promise to steer drivers out of spaces with the technology operating across parallel parking bays and traditional car parks.

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Drivers just need to operate the clutch, throttle and brake following signals and instructions from the vehicle.

However, these self-parking tools are still rare and often come as added extras with price tags sometimes more than £1,000.

Despite this, Mr O’Driscoll says a full autonomous parking system where cars can pay remotely may be operational within half a decade.

He added technology was already being rolled out across some car firms with more set to follow in the immediate future.

He exclusively told Express.co.uk: “Eventually in-app will be the de-facto method of parking.

“If we move the clock forward five years, maybe eight years you will see it moving in-car.

“We’ve gone live with Land Rover, with our in-car patent. If you buy a Land Rover you can pay for your parking on your car dashboard.

“We’re due to go live with BMW in February or March next year but we are already live in the USA and Germany.”

Many car park bays have already adopted cashless parking bays with a focus on smartphone apps.

However, GreenFlag warns not every driver is comfortable in using a mobile phone app while some drivers may not have access to one.

An investigation last year found three million drivers had been fined because they had no way to pay at car parks which had introduced cashless parking.

Peter O’Driscoll says interactive payments service penetrated around 45 percent of all parking receipts in the UK.

He says RingGo accounts for around a third of this as more drivers ditch pay and display machines for new technology.

Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk, he said: “You have to look at phone parking as an evolution.

“When I started off the iPhone hadn’t been invented and you used to use key presses on your phone to pay for parking.

“It was quite a cumbersome registration process but once you were in it worked really well.

“Then along came smartphones and now we see that probably 75 percent goes through a smartphone app in the UK.”

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