[tren_hard]

I could see a future integrated feature among cars brands doing this with their cameras. Teslas in your area on the road are already monitoring everything, then flag available street parking spots so autopilot cars looking for parking are dispatched to the nearest one. No need for drones if you already have a sufficiently large fleet of cars on the road.

[themafia]

Why wouldn't we just wire up all the parking spaces with sensors and then have a city wide parking app just for this? That seems far more efficient and safer over having a fleet of parking scout drones randomly flying throughout the city.

[wongarsu]

Because the car owner has an incentive to spend a couple thousand extra for a scout drone, but cities have very little incentive to spend many millions on a major infrastructure project that achieves the same. Despite that being cheaper than everyone getting a drone port in their car

[Waterluvian]

It feels intuitive that cities would have the same incentive to maximize use of parking spots as they do having them in the first place. Cities want commerce to flow.

But let’s simplify it down a bit further: pretend all parking spots are for-profit. These lots would want to communicate vacancy to maximize use. Much like how motels are motivated to tell you when they have vacancy without you having to stop to find out.

[bluebarbet]

The correct answer seems to be: because our economic model requires that new junk be constantly invented in order that we have something to buy. Alas.