Do you trust your smartphone to park your car for you? Bosch thinks you will

New sensor kit will allow drivers to get out their vehicle and active parking remotely through their smartphone

The tricky science of parallel parking could be the next of life’s chores to be consigned to the dustbin of history, after Bosch unveils a device today that will allow drivers to park their cars remotely – with but a swipe of their smartphone.

Driverless cars have been on the radar for a while now, but they’re many years away from practical reality, according to the German manufacturer’s chairman Werner Struth.

 Instead, he said in a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show yesterday, it looks like they’ll be preceded by gadgets that’ll automate specific, tricky tasks for drivers, in a step-by-step process designed to acclimatise consumers and politicians to autonomous vehicles.

With Bosch’s Automatic Driver Assistant, sensors are fitted to a car, as well as hardware that allows it both to park and to pull out of a spot, whether the driver is at the wheel or no. The system is activated either with a button on your keyfob, or through a connected smartphone app.

Bosch will fully demonstrate its new tech at the show in Las Vegas later today, but in a preview seen by the BBC, a regular family car was seen parallel parking perfectly into quite a tight spot, with its driver stood outside.

There’s no word so far on when the app will be available to consumers, or how it will be priced.