London Gatwick has launched a robotic airport parking service

walthamstow

It's quite reasonably priced too (for airport parking), about £80 a week booking for September today. I paid that for short stay parking at Stansted earlier this summer.

smnscu

I'd be curious how it handles someone parking poorly in that bay e.g. diagonally. Presumably those lines serve as a parking guide and the door won't close unless you park correctly.

trebligdivad

I wonder what their secure parking area looks like.

beardyw

I remember parking in central London where you left your car in a single space inside a building and it would whisk it up onto some unseen location. I think that was under human control but maybe it will make a comeback with automation.

PaulRobinson

As a general rule, you should take the train to Gatwick if you can, but this is reasonably priced and next time I'm flying from Gatwick I'll probably drive and do this - the train route for me is a bit fiddly, and the worst bit of any London airport for a local is long-stay parking. I'm much closer to Heathrow but the flights from LGW are so much cheaper, it more than covers two weeks of parking at this price.

embedding-shape

> The service must be booked in advance. Same-day drive-up parking is not available. Interesting, I wonder if this is just a "Like to be able to see availability and cross-reference data to set individual pricing" or if it's because of a technical limitation, and if so, what could that possibly be?

pontus

So I'll have to park my car in a garage first, then take a bus to the terminal just so that a robot can move my car from the place where I parked it to a different place? I was hoping it'd be something where I'd pull up to the curb, grab my bags and head in while the robot parked the car for me but apparently I'll still have to take a bus to the terminal?

djhworld

I always wonder with solutions like these how stuff like alarm systems on the car cope with the car being lifted, the vibrations encountered as its being towed. Unless they tell you to switch the alarm system off I guess.

txomon

Am I the only one bothered because the license plate masking they have used is so bad that you can see the License plate whole several times?

ryanmcbride

Wow finally something capable of parking cars! I'm sure it'll be so much better and cheaper than just paying valets to do it too!

flipbrad

I wonder what the failure mode for something like this is (e.g. in bad weather, after a power cut, a car catches fire, etc). Nobody in the country with keys, cars parked so close together you probably couldn't get in anyway... could be interesting!

inigyou

There are systems where you park your car on a moving platform and the whole platform slots into an underground warehouse. That seems simpler and safer.

ajay-b

"Unlike traditional valet parking, passengers retain possession of their keys throughout their trip." "If passengers accidentally leave an essential item in the vehicle after drop-off, on-site staff will be available to retrieve emergency items." But.. how would they get that emergency item if they don't have the keys?

matthewpick

You could pack the cars so close together that no one could get into them. Could be seen as a bit of a theft deterrent, although I’m sure the car park itself is pretty secure.

pj_mukh

Great, now let's (gradually) get rid of all surface parking lots and build hyper-optimized multi-floor parking setups not made for human driving. A sort of Ocado Grocery Warehouse [1] for cars. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE As always, yes I know this already exists in Japan.

rwmj

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/26/water-supply... As long as you don't want to use the toilet.

reenorap

The cookie screen for this web site is the most deceitful I’ve come across in a long time. How do I report this?

artisinal

Will probably not be long until a YouTuber tries to hide in their car while it gets picked up. Would make for a fun video. Tom Scott perhaps? Though he will likely get full access to the system.

pkulak

I guess we can add this to the ever-growing list of extremely expensive, complicated, inefficient and convoluted solutions to problems that end with the final specification: "but it can't be a train".

varispeed

I heard horror stories, where "secure storage area" was actually a field without any security. Not saying this is the case here, but one must be mad to give a car like that without knowing exact location it is going. It's one of the things where I can't see what is there robot's role here.