Rotary parking systems
What is a rotary parking system?
A rotary parking system stacks cars vertically on a powered carousel rather than spreading them across a lot. Platforms circulate on a chain-and-sprocket drive so that any bay can be brought down to the entry level, which means the system needs ground space for roughly one or two cars regardless of how many it holds. It is also sold as a vertical rotary system, a carousel parking system or, more broadly, a mechanical parking system.
How many cars does an AutoDock tower hold?
It depends on the height specified for the site. The series runs from 5 levels holding 8 cars up to 12 levels holding 22, gaining two spaces per level, and every configuration stands in the ground footprint of about two conventional surface spaces. SUV-rated units share the same layouts up to 11 levels and 20 spaces. Height is usually set by local planning limits rather than by the system, so the right question for a given plot is how many levels it is allowed, not how many the tower can do.
How much weight can an AutoDock platform carry?
Each AutoDock platform is rated to 3,500 kg. Commercial rotary systems are commonly rated between 2,000 and 2,500 kg per platform, which is enough for a hatchback or a sedan but rules out heavier SUVs, pickups and most electric vehicles once their battery pack is counted. The higher rating is what lets a single tower take a mixed fleet without reserving particular bays for particular vehicles.
How long does it take to retrieve a car?
Retrieval time is measured to the furthest platform, because that is the worst case a driver will experience. Commercial rotary systems typically quote between 60 and 120 seconds to bring the most distant bay down to the entry level. Ask for the figure at the furthest position rather than an average, and ask whether it is measured under full load.
What should I compare when selecting a rotary parking system?
Compare payload rating per platform, because it decides which vehicles the system can actually take and it is where cheaper systems are quietly limited; retrieval time to the furthest bay; the structural steel grade; the corrosion treatment; the control architecture, which should be a programmable logic controller rather than relay logic; and the safety interlocks fitted as standard rather than as options. Also compare what the quoted bay count costs in ground area, since footprint is the reason to choose a tower at all.
What safety systems should a parking tower have as standard?
Expect photoelectric overhang detection, which refuses to move a platform when a vehicle projects beyond it; anti-fall locking mechanisms on the platforms; automated limit switches at the travel extremes; overload alarms tied to the payload rating; and emergency stop circuits reachable from the entry level. Treat any of these being listed as an optional extra as a reason to ask why.
What materials and construction details matter?
The structural frame should be a high-tensile steel such as Q355, with a yield strength around 355 MPa, or Q345 as an acceptable minimum; plain carbon steel such as Q235 is not suited to the cyclic loads a carousel applies. Look for hot-dip galvanisation with a stated coating thickness in microns rather than paint alone, Grade 8.8 or 10.9 galvanised fasteners at structural joints, corrugated anti-slip platform plates, and a pre-stretched fatigue-resistant alloy chain. Ask the manufacturer for Material Test Reports documenting chemical composition and yield strength.
Manufacturing, installation and support
Who manufactures the AutoDock rotary parking system?
Every tower is manufactured by Shandong Jiuroad Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., a national-level “Little Giant” enterprise with 25+ years of infrastructure engineering and 200+ core patents. AutoDock AI holds exclusive rights in India for the distribution, deployment and R&D of this technology, and distribution and usage rights in the United States.
Who supplies rotary parking with EV charging in every bay in India?
AutoDock AI. We hold the exclusive rights in India to distribute, deploy and develop Jiuroad’s patented rotary parking system, in which every bay has its own AC fast charger that keeps charging while the tower rotates. That makes AutoDock AI the only company in India that can supply this system.
Where and how are the towers built?
In a 56,000 m² smart base with a 95% smart manufacturing rate: laser cutting, Panasonic Double Gantry Robotic Welding Systems holding structural tolerances under 2 mm, large CNC Universal Gantry Mills and an automated powder coating line, with an annual production capacity of 60,000+ parking spaces.
How long does installation take?
Main structural components are pre-assembled into standardised modules in the factory, enabling quick 3–5 day installation per unit. The standardised modular structures reduce on-site construction time and labour costs by up to 70%.
What warranty and support come with the system?
A lifetime quality warranty is offered on the core upper and lower DRMT transmission mechanisms, thanks to their zero-wear meshing design. Weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual servicing manuals are provided for local operational teams.
What conditions is the system built to withstand?
It is engineered to operate reliably between −40 °C and +55 °C, and to withstand Grade 10 winds and magnitude 8.0 earthquakes.
EV charging
Should a parking facility install AC or DC charging?
Dwell time decides it. Where vehicles sit for hours, such as residential or workplace parking, AC charging is usually sufficient and far cheaper per bay. Where dwell time is short and turnover is high, such as retail or a fleet depot, DC fast charging is what keeps the bay productive. Sizing charger output without first measuring dwell time is the most common and most expensive mistake in this category.
How fast does an AutoDock EV charging station charge?
Every bay in an AutoDock tower is a 21 kW AC fast charging station. A 48 kWh solar canopy feeds four 21 kW AC fast chargers in parallel, so cars draw power while they are parked rather than occupying a separate charging stall for the length of a session.
Does a car keep charging while the tower rotates?
Yes. The CHARPARKING system enables safe, continuous EV charging whether the garage is rotating or at rest, so a car parked in any bay keeps charging while other bays are brought down to the entry level.
What is dynamic load management?
Dynamic load management, or DLM, distributes a site electrical capacity across active charging sessions in software instead of reserving a fixed output for every charger. It throttles and reallocates in real time so that simultaneous sessions never exceed what the connection can carry, which avoids both grid overload and the cost of upgrading the supply to cover a peak that rarely happens.
Does AutoDock support dynamic load management?
Yes. AutoDock treats a site as one envelope and shares it rather than giving each charger a fixed output. At a fleet depot that envelope is 1,440 kW across 20 vehicles, and each DC charger draws between 30 and 180 kW depending on the state of charge and the departure window of the vehicle in front of it. Power follows demand instead of being reserved per bay.
What is OCPP and why does it matter?
The Open Charge Point Protocol is the open standard that lets charging hardware talk to management software. Specifying it means the chargers and the back office can be replaced independently, so a hardware choice does not lock the site into one vendor software for its life. OCPP 1.6J is the common baseline; ask for a documented upgrade path to OCPP 2.0.1 rather than a promise.
What should I check on a DC fast charger specification?
Check rated output against the voltage window it holds that output across, since a 160 kW unit that only reaches full power between 200 V and 1000 V behaves differently across vehicle platforms; maximum current, which is commonly at least 400 A on a high-power unit; whether the cable is air cooled or liquid cooled, as liquid cooling is what makes high current manageable by hand; peak efficiency at full load, where above 94 per cent is a reasonable bar; ingress and impact protection such as IP54 or IP55 and IK10; the cabinet operating range, often quoted around minus 30 to plus 55 degrees Celsius; and the connector standards fitted, which differ by market.
How is charging billed at an AutoDock tower?
Each session is metered per kWh and settled autonomously over FASTag or UPI. There is no attendant, no card terminal and no separate in-app payment step, so the billing happens as a consequence of parking rather than as a second transaction the driver has to complete.
Planning parking and charging capacity
How do I plan charging capacity alongside parking capacity?
Start from dwell time and turnover rate, which together tell you how many vehicles a bay serves in a day and how long each one has to charge. Use those to set charger output, then set the number of ports per bay from the utilisation you expect at peak. Plan the electrical capacity against a realistic simultaneous peak rather than the sum of every charger nameplate, and use dynamic load management to hold that ceiling.
When should a site add more charging ports?
Utilisation rate is the trigger. A common threshold is to plan expansion once existing ports exceed roughly 80 per cent daily utilisation at peak, because queueing rises sharply above that point. Measuring utilisation per port rather than across the site matters, since a clustered deployment can show healthy average utilisation while individual ports are saturated.
What is make-ready infrastructure?
Make-ready means installing the conduit, cabling and electrical panels for more chargers than you are fitting today, so that adding them later is a hardware swap rather than a second round of civil works. It is almost always cheaper than returning to trench the same ground twice, and it is the single decision most often regretted when it is skipped.
What is ICEing, and does a parking tower prevent it?
ICEing is when an internal combustion vehicle occupies a bay reserved for electric vehicles, blocking access to the charger. It is a persistent problem in open surface lots because enforcement depends on signage and staff. An enclosed automated tower removes the failure mode rather than policing it, because drivers never reach the bays and the system assigns them.
About AutoDock
Where is AutoDock available?
We are in Kerala. AutoDock AI Private Limited is a company registered in Kozhikode, Kerala.
Who is AutoDock for?
Builders and developers working to a plot ratio, residential societies without the ground area for surface parking, malls and hospitals with high turnover, and fleet and robotaxi operators who need a depot that parks and charges without staff. The constraint the tower solves is ground area, so it earns its cost wherever land is the expensive input.