MLCP
An MLCP parks cars on more than one level so a site holds more of them on less land. There are three ways to build one, and they use land very differently.
Ramp-based
A concrete or steel structure with ramps between floors. Drivers find their own space, so every floor needs aisles and turning room. It handles big crowds well, but it is a full building project, and it needs nearly twice the floor space per car of an automated system.
Mechanical
Steel pallets that lift and slide to stack cars two to six levels high, usually inside a basement or a clad frame. Drivers park on a pallet at ground level and the system does the rest. Common in apartment and office buildings.
Automated
The machine moves every car. A rotary tower carries 8 to 22 cars on a vertical loop above a footprint of about 6.5 m × 5.5 m, stands on its own without a building around it, and in AutoDock towers has an AC fast charger in every bay.
Land is what an MLCP exists to save, so compare them on ground area per car, at the same height. A 20-car rotary tower is 11 levels tall, so here every MLCP is 11 levels too.
| Parking type | Space per car | Ground per car at 11 levels |
|---|---|---|
| Open surface parking | 23 m² | 23 m² (one level) |
| MLCP with ramps | 30 m² per level | 2.7 m² |
| Rotary tower, 20 cars | 20 cars on 6.55 × 5.5 m | 2.6 m² with its drive · 1.8 m² tower only |
| Automated MLCP with lifts | 16 m² per level | 1.5 m² |
Level for level, a rotary tower uses about the same ground per car as a ramp MLCP, and a fully automated lift building uses less. The difference is what you have to build: a tower needs no building, goes up in 3 to 5 days, and fits on a plot too small for ramps.
Space per car for surface parking and MLCPs: Master Plan for Delhi 2021, Table 17.3, Space Standards for Car Parking, which includes each type’s own aisles, ramps or lifts. It is Delhi’s standard, used here as a reference; other cities follow their own bye-laws and the National Building Code. Ground per car divides it by the number of levels and leaves out setbacks. Rotary footprints are the manufacturer’s published dimensions; “with its drive” adds half of a 6 m drive shared by two facing rows of towers.
Small plots are where towers make the biggest difference. Enter your plot’s frontage and depth to compare towers with parking on the ground.
Plot area: 168 m²
A first estimate only. Surface parking uses Delhi’s MPD-2021 standard of 23 m² per car, aisles included. Towers stand in rows along the frontage, 5.5 m wide each, facing in pairs across a shared 6 m drive. Setbacks, access, fire rules and local bye-laws will change the real number.
The footprint barely changes as capacity grows; height does. Check the height against your local limit first. Sedan models, from the manufacturer’s specification sheet.
| Cars | Levels | Footprint | Height | Ground per car | Longest retrieval |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 5 | 6.45 × 5.5 m | 10.2 m | 4.4 m² | 92 s |
| 10 | 6 | 6.45 × 5.5 m | 12.0 m | 3.5 m² | 115 s |
| 12 | 7 | 6.45 × 5.5 m | 13.9 m | 3.0 m² | 126 s |
| 14 | 8 | 6.55 × 5.5 m | 15.7 m | 2.6 m² | 130 s |
| 16 | 9 | 6.55 × 5.5 m | 17.6 m | 2.3 m² | 148 s |
| 18 | 10 | 6.55 × 5.5 m | 19.4 m | 2.0 m² | 135 s |
| 20 | 11 | 6.55 × 5.5 m | 21.2 m | 1.8 m² | 150 s |
| 22 | 12 | 6.55 × 5.5 m | 23.1 m | 1.6 m² | 165 s |
SUV models share the same layouts up to 20 cars, at 5.7 m wide and up to 26.4 m tall.
A rotary MLCP is a machine rather than a building, and that changes how it is maintained, charged, placed and, if needed, moved.
The DRMT drive meshes its teeth instead of sliding them against each other, so the parts that usually wear out don’t, and maintenance costs stay low. Servicing still follows a schedule: weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual manuals come with every tower.
The upper and lower DRMT transmission mechanisms, the core of the tower, carry a lifetime quality warranty because of their zero-wear meshing design.
Every bay in an AutoDock tower has its own AC fast charger, so a 20-car tower is also 20 charging points. Cars charge while they’re parked, even while the tower turns, which makes switching to electric easier for everyone who parks there.
Towers slot into gaps beside existing buildings, courtyards and leftover corners, so you add parking without demolishing anything or pouring a new structure.
A tower can also be built into a building, as the manufacturer has done in Bangkok and Malaysia, so the parking sits within the architecture rather than beside it.
Towers are assembled on site from standard bolted steel modules rather than cast in concrete. That means a tower can be taken down and put up again on another site if your plans change. We confirm the details for each project.
No attendant and no valet. Drivers book in the app or walk up, the tower recognises them, and the site owner gets the data to run parking as a business.
Only from AutoDock AI in India: we hold the exclusive rights to Jiuroad’s patented rotary parking system with a charger in every bay, and we are the only company in India that can supply it.
Ways in
A booked visit
The driver picks a time and a bay in the app, with or without charging.
A camera at the entry reads the number plate and matches it to the booking.
The tower brings the booked bay down to the entrance. The driver parks and walks away.
One tap, or a face or card at the terminal, brings the car back down. Parking and charging settle over FASTag or UPI.
What you see in AutoDock OS
When cars arrive and leave, how far ahead people book, and which hours fill first, so you can price and staff around the peaks.
Income from parking fees and from every kWh charged, per bay and per day, in one place instead of two systems.
How many visitors are new and how many come back, and how often, read from bookings and number plates.
Revenue against the tower’s cost over time. Bring in your own sales figures and you can see how parking lines up with footfall on the days your business is busiest.
Small, narrow or leftover plots where land costs more than steel: city centres, hospitals, malls, offices and residential societies. Towers go up one at a time, so a site can start with one and add more as demand grows, and every bay charges an EV while it is parked. The manufacturer’s modular structure goes up in 3 to 5 days per unit.
Where hundreds of cars arrive or leave in the same few minutes, such as stadiums, since each tower loads through one bay; several towers in a group, or a ramp MLCP, handle that better. Also where the height limit is below about 10 m, the height of the smallest tower, or where land is cheap enough that surface parking makes sense. And where a site can take a full automated lift building, that building will park more cars per square metre.
Share the dimensions, the height limit and how many cars you need. We will come back with a layout and a count.
Talk to us about your site