As Kuala Lumpur transforms into a mega-metropolis, roads get more congested, traffic snarls become more commonplace and parking spaces diminish in tandem. It is this type of scenario that painted a picture in my mind when I came across this article featuring futuristic garages in the UK’s Daily Mail (January 28, 2012)!
These garages are the ultimate car showroom – where new vehicles sit with pride in the stunning glass towers – housed at the Volkswagen theme park, the Autostadt (“car city”). And each day about 600 cars are picked up from the two 200 feet tall silos by their new owners – making it the world’s largest vehicle delivery center.
Incredibly, the cars are built at the manufacturer's main plant, in Wolfsburg, Germany, and transported by conveyor belt to the adjacent towers' basement. From there they are lifted into position at a speed of two meters a second via a robotic arm that rotates and run along a central beam.
Each tower contains 400 brand new Volkswagens.
An underground tunnel connects the two buildings, and the cars roll along an internal track to arrive to be fitted with license plates.
New owners can watch as their car is picked up from a bay and delivered to them at the Autostadt CustomerCenter, with the speedometer at zero.
Moreover, the weather’s gone cuckoo – yes, blame it on global warming. In parts of Kuala Lumpur, ground-level car parks and especially basement car parks are at the mercy of rising waters when rainstorms batter our cities, bringing about flash floods that will drown cars or sending them adrift. We all know how frequent Kuala Lumpur experiences this phenomenon.
So parking lots that tower high above our roads can be a boon to KL motorists. I would even be so bold to suggest that if the twin towers in Autostadt are only 20 storeys high – for Kuala Lumpur, where car populations are expanding rapidly, I could envision them to be 40 or even 60 storeys high! That’s parking spaces for 800 to1,000 cars! Now, isn’t this a fab idea?
Having advanced in two domestic cup competitions in the past week, Liverpool got its Premier League campaign back on track with a 3-0 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday. Andy Carroll celebrated the first anniversary of his £35m move to Liverpool by opening the scoring when he prodded in at the far post to beat Wolves goalie Eggert Jonsson (52) – after collecting a cross from Charlie Adam. Craig Bellamy added a second with a low finish (61) and Dirk Kuyt scored a third after a quick break (78). Liverpool is now in fifth place in the EPL standings.
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