My Mach-E did this by itself today! (self-parking)

There was a parallel parking spot on a neighborhood street, and the only remaining spot for quite a ways. As I'm coming from a bit of a smaller car, I didn't quite trust myself to do without a bit of tenseness.

So I gave the self-park feature a shot. It worked flawlessly. The Mach-E did it in a single shot backing in and a small scoot forward. ? I'm definitely impressed.

I've just had to get used to the sequence of steps necessary for selecting the spot I want (press the Self-Park button, signal and drive forward to the sufficient distance past the target spot.) The Mustang also has a tendency to move too close to the car in front at the end of self-parking. I prefer scooting backward to be equally spaced between the front and back cars.




Meanwhile down the street... (they must not have been using Auto Pilot ?‍ )

UsernameChecksOut said:

The Mustang also has a tendency to move too close to the car in front at the end of self-parking.

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I believe it's a feature, not a bug, as it assumes you may want more room in the back to access the hatch.

Rapid Ed said:

I believe it's a feature, not a bug, as it assumes you may want more room in the back to access the hatch.

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Ah, but what about the frunk? Gotcha there!!!! ?

Was it slow, or not too bad? I've parallel parked mine exactly once now. It had been years since I parallel parked a car, but it is quite easy in the MME. It has good visibility, a relatively small footprint, no large blind overhangs, and the camera is a huge help. I also might have gotten lucky. I was tempted to try the self parking, but I was on a fairly busy street and I only had a small window without a car in my lane.

I'll admit when I saw the title of the post I expected the worst. Glad to be proved wrong! ?

Glad to hear it works. Have not tired it. Sharp Color btw.

OH2AZ2OH said:

Was it slow, or not too bad?

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Actually, I felt quite fast! It certain backed in faster than I personally would have. For a brief moment I was worried that the front passenger-side corner would hit the car in front. But I guess the car's sensors know the actually distance. While holding the P button down, I was tempted to let go for fear of impact... but hung on and let it do its thing.

Having done the self-park just a few times now, I feel that the parts that feel slow are first identifying the appropriate parking spot for the Mach-E. Let's say there's a parallel parking spot on your right. You activate self-park and are creeping forward with your blinker on... and creeping and creeping. I ended up wondering "why isn't the car seeing this spot already?!". My observation thus far is that you actually need to creep forward further than you think before the Mach-E registers that spot as the one to go for. But once you do and shift into neutral and press down on the P button, things will go pretty quickly from there.

The other thing that I've found not to work very well is attempting parallel or perpendicular self-park where there's only one vehicle to park next to or behind/in-front of. My guess here is that the self-park feature was designed primarily to work with two reference points. So it needs a car on either side for perpendicular parking. It needs a car in front and in back for parallel parking. I could be wrong, but the few times I tried with only one adjacent car, it felt like the Mustang couldn't quite deal with it.

mdolan92869 said:

Ah, but what about the frunk? Gotcha there!!!! ?

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I'm almost certain the engineers thought of this... that's why they made the frunk such a PITA to open!! ?

Can you upload a video of the self park feature?

OH2AZ2OH said:

Was it slow, or not too bad? I've parallel parked mine exactly once now. It had been years since I parallel parked a car, but it is quite easy in the MME. It has good visibility, a relatively small footprint, no large blind overhangs, and the camera is a huge help. I also might have gotten lucky. I was tempted to try the self parking, but I was on a fairly busy street and I only had a small window without a car in my lane.

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I've used the self park dozens of times both in parallel and tight parking lot situations. It's one of the best features of the car. Always works flawlessly.

I have used it quite a few times, and been pleased with it. Though I find the perpendicular park to be very slow.. not painful but close. Does a great job though!

I discovered a new behavior with perpendicular park today though.. I always assumed that it didn't look at painted lines and just used other cars as a reference, but I'm beginning to question that. Today it picked a spot where there were two cars with two open spaces in between.

Like this (∆ represents a car)
|∆|_|_|∆|

When it chose that spot I assumed it would just use the two cars as a reference and place it self right in the middle on top of the line. Instead, it picked a spot and stayed within the lines!

mpshizzle said:

Like this (∆ represents a car)
|∆|_|_|∆|

When it chose that spot I assumed it would just use the two cars as a reference and place it self right in the middle on top of the line. Instead, it picked a spot and stayed within the lines!

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Now I really want to go out and try this more to reverse engineer the logic/algorithm they use!

Are you certain that it read the lines? Or possibly it’s just trying to get to a fixed gap between itself and any one car it can identify? ?

JerryL said:

Can you upload a video of the self park feature?

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I’ll try to… I think it’d be best if I could set up my camera on a tripod outside. Will have to find a time and opportunity to do this.

UsernameChecksOut said:

Now I really want to go out and try this more to reverse engineer the logic/algorithm they use!

Are you certain that it read the lines? Or possibly it’s just trying to get to a fixed gap between itself and any one car it can identify? ?

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That's totally possible.. I'm not sure. I would assume it doesn't used a fixed distance, because you can't assume width of parking spots. But who knows!

JerryL said:

Can you upload a video of the self park feature?

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many to choose from:
This Mustang Mach-E Parks Itself - How To Use Active Park Assist - YouTube
Mustang Mach-E | Active Park Assist - YouTube
2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E Active Park Assist 2.0 DEMO! - YouTube