Name: I climbed inside a giant robotic parking garage
Uploaded: 2026-01-22T17:16:33.000Z
Duration: 4 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

There are a lot of obvious questions about an automated bicycle storage park, like why it's cool, it feels like the future.

Adverbs of manner

And importantly for this video, I'm able to attach my GoPro cameras to the bike to get some shots of how it all works from the inside.

Adverbs of degree

But when the alternative for bicycle parking is relatively cheap metal tubes concreted into the ground.

Well, why would you build something with lots of moving parts that's way more complicated and expensive?

Well, if space is really, really limited, like here in Shinagawa in Tokyo, this can be a reasonable solution without the need for human access.

You can fit way more bikes in the same footprint, closer together and stacked vertically.

No one wants to walk their bike up or down a 10 story underground ramp, but

The bike's also safe from theft or damage.

This one above ground building can store up to 200 bicycles in the vaults below it.

I was going to interview someone about this, but

the company who builds these said, well, you know, we do these for cars as well.

And yes, of course I'm going to attach GoPros to this car as well.

Except this time I'm going to be watching from underground.

I'm going to try and get this piece to camera while the heavy equipment is moving behind me.

I've been given a very specific safety position to stand in.

Like, the lights aren't usually on down here.

There are the same benefits here as the cycle park.

Yes, you've still got to have some space for cars, but they can park closer together.

There's no need for as much headroom and there's no need for the space for everyone to manoeuvre around each other.

So they can park almost twice as many cars in the same space.

On the surface, there is just the one building.

When you've got land available, yes, something with no moving parts will be much easier and cheaper or, you know, good public transit.

But in the absence of those, there are places where this could be useful.

I wasn't quite sure this was enough for a video on its own, though.

But then the team here told me about the version of this they built that parks electric cars and lets them charge while they're in storage.

Because charging a car requires human intervention, at some point, you've got to plug the car into a charger.

So once the car's in position here, how is that charging hookup handled?

I thought maybe robotic arms plugging in chargers.

Tesla were teasing that many years ago and then obviously never delivered.

You plug the car into the platform you're parking on, and

that platform has a heavy duty rugged connector that can link it to the mains.

This is their demonstration model, built above ground, but there's no reason it couldn't be hidden underground too.

This company's main business is construction equipment, after all.

Now for this version, it's just one model of small, designed to run around the local area.

It's not a high speed charger, but in theory this could be scaled up.

Modern charges aren't like old plug sockets.

There's computers negotiating each link and making sure it's stable.

So it's not like there's a big spark on disconnection.

I wouldn't expect parking lots like this everywhere, but

in a few cities where space is at a premium, it could be an option.

Personally, I'm just looking forward to seeing the footage from those GoPros.