To ease the daily commute of customers, Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI) has collaborated with Get My Parking to assist end-users in searching and navigating to an available parking lot. Under its flagship Startup Autobahn India programme, the company has been working closely with the IoT-driven platform, to embed this feature into all Mercedes-Benz cars equipped with Mercedes me connect, introduced in October 2019. Through this partnership, MBRDI has gone a step ahead by leveraging the startup ecosystem to reaffirm its commitment towards adding value to the Mercedes-Benz car users.
The Parking solution seeks to address the challenge posed by traffic congestions and limited parking space. It is worth noting, that as per a recent research released by TomTom Traffic Index, Mumbai is the second-most congested city in the world, followed by Bengaluru and New Delhi, at sixth and eighth ranks, respectively. Now, starting January 2021, this new feature is built-in to the cars’ MBUX head unit to provide navigation to Points of Interests (PoIs) across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Pune. Further, the solution will extend itself to 45 additional cities in the upcoming months.
This development aims to offer a seamless experience across both, the Mercedes me mobile app and the in-car infotainment system, thus, enhancing the car users’ convenience, including offstreet parking lots. While providing an integrated user experience that will run a quick view of the nearby available parking spaces or garages overlaid on the map, the solution also gives the option to initiate route towards these spaces.
Commenting on MBRDI’s role in bringing world-class innovations as part of the Daimler Group, Manu Saale, Managing Director & CEO - MBRDI, said, “Daimler is committed towards moving the world with cars that resonate with the need of the future, and we, at MBRDI, are at the forefront of enabling this objective. This innovation will help us layer the user experience with intuitiveness around available parking info into our MBUX head units itself, to save needless hassle for customers.” He further added, “Our partnership with Get My Parking is a result of our Startup Autobahn 2020 programme, launched to showcase our focus on disruptive technologies and to make world-class innovations, come alive. This association will not only benefit end-users, but shall also lend fillip to the startup space that receives our leading-edge support through the flagship programme.”
Commenting on this collaboration, Rasik Pansare, Co-founder and CMO – Get My Parking, said, “As pioneers of smart parking in India, we have always wanted to help urban citizens to experience hassle free parking. This collaboration with MBRDI has accelerated us towards our mission, wherein the users can access detailed data on relevant parking lots from the ease of their in-car dashboard.”
MBRDI is committed to consistently add value to the connected car technology segment, while tailoring features for the Indian market. Last year, for instance, MBRDI equipped the third generation of the new GLS with fully packed connected services through its latest MBUX multimedia infotainment system. As a thoughtful innovation during the pandemic, the infotainment system enabled users to navigate to the nearest COVID-19 testing centres using the most updated information provided by ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research). This enabled the cars enabled with Mercedes me connect to provide important information to its users at the time of need, through its connected services.
The latest solution developed in collaboration with Get My parking by MBRDI, is one of the myriad contributions of the company as Daimler’s own center of excellence that is at the nerve center of its innovation in Design & CAE, vehicle engineering, interior component designs and IT technologies.
