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Hidden inside a 46-story luxury condominium building in Miami is a massive garage where dozens of busy robots transport cars to and from parking spots.
The futuristic 24/7 operation takes place in a 13-level garage and uses five car elevators, dozens of lasers and hundreds of barcodes embedded in the floors. Residents who pull into one of the building’s five parking areas save the valuable time of searching for a space, instead entrusting their vehicles to robot valets who park the cars for them.
Five bays equipped with self-service terminals allow entry and exit from the building’s automated parking lot.
Ginger Monteleone
All of this takes place inside Brickell House, which houses about 375 condominium residences and the largest and tallest automated parking system of its kind, according to ParkPlus, the company that built it.
Automated parking is a growing trend in high-end real estate where buildings from New York to Miami are now equipped with kiosks, car elevators and parking robots. A coveted spot in some Manhattan luxury condos can start at $300,000. Meanwhile, a real estate agent representing a five bedroom penthouse at Brickell House told CNBC that the $15 million asking price includes five parking spaces in the sci-fi-like structure.
One of five car elevators inside the automated parking system.
Ginger Monteleone
These modern parking equipment are part of the smart parking market, which includes a wide range of solutions from automated parking to digital payment systems. According to Grand View Research, the global smart parking market was valued at $6.5 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $30.16 billion by 2030, with a significant share of this market in North America.
A ParkPlus representative told CNBC that U.S. demand for advanced automated systems, like the one at Brickell House, is primarily driven by luxury residential projects in higher-density urban metros, while auto dealerships, hospitals , hotels, parking lots, car collectors and private residences often opt for generally less advanced mechanical systems.
Top view of one of the garage’s 13-story car elevators.
Ginger Monteleone
Inside the world’s largest automated parking system
Brickell House’s garage, off-limits to humans, is controlled by 29 robots also known as Automated Guide Vehicles, or AGVs for short.
AGVs are essentially free-roaming, self-charging robot-parkers that use vision systems, elevators and lasers to precisely park and retrieve cars. They are 12 feet long and 4 feet wide, with a steel platform located just 10 inches above the ground.
Hidden beneath each of the powerful machines, which can transport cars weighing up to 6,000 pounds, are eight wheels, bright flashing lights and an electronic eye that can read barcodes embedded in the floor to guide you.
One of 29 robot-parkers, also called automated guide vehicles (AGV).
Ginger Monteleone
The agile robots slide under a vehicle and appear to effortlessly carry it up and down floors and in and out of car elevators. They follow a calculated division of labor: some AGVs simply move cars to and from elevators, others are responsible for moving cars from floor to floor and location to location. A vehicle entering or exiting the system can be handled by up to three AGVs passing the car from one robot colleague to another.
And because no humans need enter or exit the vehicle, parking can be very precise, placing vehicles in spots just 2 inches apart.
An AGV prepares to park a Ferrari inside Brickell House’s automated parking system.
Ginger Monteleone
During CNBC’s visit to the ParkPlus system, our team equipped a Ferrari 488 Spider with cameras and recorded the automated recovery process. He went from the ninth level of the garage to a bay on the ground floor in less than four minutes.
According to ParkPlus, rigorous testing is essential for the system to work and mitigate risks: the robots have demonstrated that they can move 15 vehicles in and out of the garage in rapid succession for 40 hours straight without a single problem.
The return on investment of robot parking
The cost of an automated system like the one at Brickell House varies widely depending on the building, but Peter Manis, president of ParkPlus Florida, said the range is typically between $20,000 and $80,000 per location.
This cost is in addition to what a developer has already spent to construct the building’s garage levels. Manis declined to reveal the exact price of the system installed at Brickell House, but garage-sized parking capacity within Manis’ estimated cost range places the price between $8 million and $32 million.
An automated guide vehicle or AGV transports a Ferrari via the PARKPLUS parking system.
Ginger Monteleone
One of the main motivations for a real estate developer to invest millions in parking automation is the system’s ability to maximize valuable square footage. Manis told CNBC that in some cases, an automated system can optimize square footage up to three times better than an old-fashioned garage.
“You don’t have on-ramps, you don’t have turns, you don’t have two different lanes and you can squeeze them right next to each other,” Manis said.
Better-utilized parking space could mean a developer would need fewer floors devoted to vehicles, freeing up square footage for residences and potentially boosting apartment sales.
Two of the system’s AGVs work together to retrieve a Mercedes from the automated parking system and deliver it to a lift.
Ginger Monteleone
High-tech parking and multi-million dollar headaches
With any new technology, there are naturally problems at an early stage.
Billionaire Palmer Luckey, who founded virtual reality company Oculus VR and military weapons maker Anduril Industries, filed a lawsuit earlier this year, claiming he got stuck in his garage elevator private.
Luckey purchased and converted a Newport Beach, California mansion into a multi-level garage equipped with an elevator and scissor lifts for his car collection. In the lawsuit filed against Luckey’s builder and subcontractor, the billionaire said the elevator “repeatedly stopped its vertical motion without warning and trapped its occupants inside.”
According to the filing, the mansion-turned-garage is now unusable and Luckey suffered “millions of dollars in damages, including a specific amount that will be proven at trial.”
Palmer Luckey, billionaire, founder of Oculus VR and Anduril Industries
CNBC
In response, the builder’s attorney told CNBC that his client filed a cross-complaint arguing that the elevator and elevators were the responsibility of the specialty subcontractor, which Palmer personally approved to build the elevators. Meanwhile, the contractor filed a motion to strike the lawsuit and did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Back in Miami, Brickell House experienced its own headline-grabbing parking nightmare. In 2016, well before the new AGV system was installed, the homeowners’ association filed a complaint against the building’s developer regarding a parking system that it claimed had never functioned properly. Residents’ cars were allegedly trapped in the system, which had been installed by a now-bankrupt parking company, and the garage was eventually closed, leaving the building without on-site parking for years, according to the lawsuit.
“The failure of [previous] system was the Achilles heel of our industry,” said Paul Bates, Chairman of ParkPlus Group.
A jury awarded the condo association more than $40 million in damages, according to court documents. This is one of the largest construction defect verdicts in Florida history.
The condo association, which declined to discuss past litigation with CNBC, also reportedly received a $32 million insurance settlement for the system.
For Bates, the new ParkPlus system at Brickell House, installed from 2022, has helped close a dark chapter in automated parking.
“Brickell House and these familiar concerns have pushed the industry to innovate, improve system reliability and focus on risk mitigation,” Bates said.