For those of you practiced with the park assist, can it handle slopes of any sort or does the ground need to be completely flat? I'm shopping for a Prius, and moving to San Francisco. I'd love the park assist for parallel parking, but if it only works on level surfaces it won't do me much good there. ~Morri
I tried once on a bit of a hill and I could not get it to work. After 3 tries I attributed it to being on said hill since there was no other reason I could find why it was not working. Personally, get the ATP for the radar cruise, LKA and pre collision system. While the self park is a nifty feature, I can parallel park a car much much much much faster than the system ever could.
Parking assist will definitely not work on a hill, not even on a slight incline. Once you give it gas, it cancels out. It needs to be on a flat surface or a grade where it'll roll on its own. I've tried it showing a friend. The spot I picked had a slight incline. The car wouldn't go on its own. I gave it a little gas and it canceled out. luckily he was curious on how the parking assist works and was patient enough for me to try out on other parking spaces. I still dont trust enough to parallel park itself unless I know there are a lot of clearance. The hill start assist will help you more on the parallel parking on a hill than IPA.
Skip the pre-support system. Except for the backing up speed which you must keep under a certain mph, there's no wasted time in setting it up.
Even skipping it, I can still just pull up, throw it in reverse and cut the wheel parking it much faster myself. Not to say the system wouldn't help other people who don't parallel park often, but IMO the other features of the ATP are more useful.
Definitely agree that the other features of the ATP are more useful. I rarely use self-parking myself. However, the pulling up and throwing it in reverse part is the same if you skip the pre-support system. The only slow part is hitting one additional button and needing to go slow in reversing. Doing it yourself is definitely faster because you're able to go faster while reversing.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this - your problem isn't likely to be the slope of the hill you're on - it's that you're moving to San Francisco. I'm pretty sure there's not a parking spot in the city big enough for the Prius to park itself. OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, but if you're counting on it to be able to squeeze you into a tight spot that you can't do yourself, well, don't. I seem to recall that it needs ~6 feet of extra space to be able to park itself. Then again, I have seen people who are bad enough at parallel parking that that's better than they are - but unless you're one of them, it's just a gimmick. I'm still waiting for Toyota to implement this type of automated parallel parking, which some students have made accurate to within two feet:
Having lived in SF for 16 yrs (and later learning to drive a manual transmission car in addition to the auto transmission), there is no better place to get your Ph.D. in parallel parking! No to mention driving on hills, starting on steep inclines, etc. Oh yes there are parking spots, but you have to learn to spot them quickly and then you learn to park to a fare thee well--that is, if you want to have a good driving/parking experience in the city. I didn't have a garage for most of those 16 yrs.
It'll park on uphills lol but not on downhills (it needs to be able to move itself without touching the accelerator).
