Self-parking Audi creeps toward production reality, haltingly

If you live in suburbia or Texas, where spaces are wide enough to fit a Toyota Yaris sideways, parking may not be a hassle. But move to San Francisco, and what few parking spots you find often barely squeeze in full-size car. Since nobody wants to end up with an Austin Powers-style parking job, Audi promises self-parking cars, utilizing technology that’s mostly already in production cars today.

The autonomous Audi A7 parking demonstration at this year's Consumer Electronics Show looked bleeding-edge cool— but how would it fare without the help of additional sensors in the parking structure? The company showcased just that at the Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory in Silicon Valley, revealing that while it’s fully functional, the computer piloting it struggles with confidence issues.