We analyse the automatic parking system of the Peugeot 208, Park Assist

Some months ago our colleague Jaime tested the new Peugeot 208 HDi with 92 CV in Intuitive trim, which among other features introduces the automatic parking system designed by Peugeot. This system, called “Park Assist”, has the peculiarity that it not only helps us park, but also to “unpark” and leave the parking space.

Nowadays more and more brands include this type of system in their equipment, and precisely for that reason we wanted to know in depth how these systems work, and in particular the system of the French manufacturer, which we tested on the Peugeot 208.

It parks on its own, but the driver accelerates and changes gear

The first thing to make clear is that any kind of automatic parking system always requires the driver to act, whether by accelerating or braking and changing gear. So, to understand how it works, we are going to go through the parking process from the beginning.

Once we are driving and want to park, we press the system button and on the touchscreen two options appear (parking or leaving a parking space). It is worth doing this a few seconds before reaching the spot we are looking for, since when we select parking and as long as we drive at low speed, the car will analyse the available spaces within the area we indicate with the indicator (left or right).

When the vehicle detects a space, it tells us to stop, and that is where the system starts to act. We take care of changing gears according to the instructions on the screen and of accelerating or braking (always smoothly), and the car takes care of turning the steering wheel to park in the marked space.

A device that seems very complicated at first is quite a lot simpler. In fact, thanks to electric power steering in cars and the data provided by the parking sensors, the car analyses all of this and calculates, based on speed, the steering angle needed for each manoeuvre. As a curiosity, it takes as a reference the cars that are already parked and, if they are further from the kerb than normal, ours will also be positioned that way.

Parking and leaving a parking space

The peculiarity of the Peugeot system is that, besides assisting with parking, it also helps when leaving a parking space. So we press the system button again, indicate on the screen that we want to leave a parking space, and follow the vehicle’s instructions.

Thanks to the indicator, the car knows which side we need to exit onto the road, and with only a few manoeuvres it hands control back to us once we are fully on the road and out of the parking space.

Personally, I find that these parking assistance systems are useful when we are unsure whether we can fit into a space. Thanks to the sensors we always know whether the car will fit or not, and we don’t waste time trying to park in a place where in the end we don’t fit or are too tight.

It is also true that the time needed to activate the system to look for a space should be somewhat simpler and quicker, because if you are not used to it, you activate the sensor too late, when you are already right on top of the parking space, although almost all brands have this same drawback.

Technical specifications of this car

HatchbackPeugeot 2089 versions · from 22,520 €