The facility shown in the photographs is not a public parking garage. It is a storage facility for new Volkswagen vehicles located at the Autostadt, in Wolfsburg, Germany. The Autostadt is a sprawling complex operated by the Volkswagen Group that comprises a variety of attractions, tours and restaurants along with facilities aimed at customers who have arrived to collect a newly purchased vehicle. Part of the new car collection procedure involves the retrieval of the vehicle from the “CarTower” shown in the above photographs.
The next steps in the procedure are automatic: a lift in one of the CarTowers selects the correct vehicle and conveys it to the centre of the tower from where it is gently lowered to the ground floor. Thereafter the new car rolls through a tunnel into the Car Distribution Centre.
Two 160-foot circular towers store 400 new cars on 20 levels, serviced by a central elevator that can retrieve a car in 30 seconds. Stacking cars in close-packed racks can be up to 50 percent more efficient than a conventional garage.
