Our Story
Beeping neighbours as you slowly drive down a street trying to spot literally any parking spot available, excitement about seeing an empty space and frustration after realizing that a Smart has already parked there, peaking at a slot and seeing it taken and finally parking extremely far away only to make sure that your car is parked at all. In fact, 30% of all road congestion in the urban areas is caused by people looking for a parking space. As fathers, mothers, Berliners and every day commuters we got bored of that. And decided to change it with plazz.
Spotters and magic algorithms
Parking has never seemed to be a complex topic. Why should it? The order seems to be simple: drive, find a spot, park. We can state with some confidence: it is not as easy as it looks like.
On-street parking spots do not have a fixed area: it can be taken by two cars one day and three cars the next one. There are also gates, restricted parking areas and parked motorbikes. And let’s not forget drivers, who should read the ‘Parking 101’ guide. Yes, there was a time when creating a magic algorithm that could deal with all this information seemed to be a mission impossible. But…
After testing different solutions we came up with an idea: spotters! We employed drivers, installed smartphones on their windscreens and let them hit the road. Full of excitement we watched how our algorithm collected the images of side roads, processed the data and sent data to our users.
Big dreams
- Save time. For family, friends and ourselves. The average time to find a parking space is 10 minutes per trip, which is almost one full day in a year. We would rather do something we actually enjoy.
- Save money. On average 4,5 kilometres of driving is required when finding a parking space. A fuller wallet doesn’t hurt.
- Save earth. More efficient use of vehicle means less CO2 emissions. On average 1,3kg of CO2 emissions can be saved per kilometre if you use the app.