| Notice the large gap between the car's rear wheels.
The large pocket under the cabin allows the 22 inch diameter front wheels of another car to park. This means the cabin floor is 24 inches above the ground. An internal combustion engine and / or a DC motor, in red, would drive the front wheels. Two guide pins are visible. One is at the very front of the car's lower body. The other is about 5 feet back. |
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| Closely spaced front wheels of one car fit between widely
spaced wheels of the car in front.
Each ten foot long lower body adds only five feet to the stack's length. The alignment track is not shown for clarity. |
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| The 8 year old, with a pink head, sits between and about one
foot behind the adults.
Each car has two guide pins which slide in a slot in the track. These tracks will keep two long stacks evenly spaced apart. Sides of the track are sloped so a car approaching at an angle can easily drive across it. Once the pins are in the track the driver will just let go of the steering wheel and the front wheels will align with the track.
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| There will be two stages of automatic speed reduction to
prevent violent contact between parking cars.
First, when the ends go up the , the car's computer will shut off the engine and switch power to a DC motor. This will limit the car's speed to about 3 mph. Second, a proximity sensor will keep a car from crashing into the back of another SRC. When the parking car gets to within 5 feet of another car the computer will lower its speed to about 6 inches per second. On a lot with thousands of cars each stack would have 10 to 20 cars. Longer stacks would create barriers to pedestrians |
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Rubber blocks at the points of contact will cushion contact between cars. The electric motor is also needed for creeping. SRCs need to be able to "creep" to bring cars to the front of the stack. If a renter drives one car out of a stack of ten then the remaining 9 will automatically creep forward five feet to create an empty space at the back of the stack. This assumes the ten cars are parked on a 55 foot track with only enough length for ten cars. Creep speed would be about 6 inches a second.
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Ten SERCs in a Stack
Two rows of a small car parking lot are shown edge on. Half the area of a typical lot is the access space required by private ownership.
The SRC would have a 5 to 6 fold parking density advantage when compared to privately owned cars. A park and ride lot that holds 1000 privately owned cars would hold at least 5000 SRCs.
Don't worry. You will never have to get your car out of the middle of a long stack. You would always rent the car at the front of the stack. You would rent a different car every day.