Man tests assisted parking in Tesla, Audi, Ford and BMW to see which EV performs best and it's bad news for Model S

To see which car can use its assisted parking features the best, this electric vehicle expert has compared a Tesla Model S, Audi e‑tron, Ford Mustang Mach-E, and a BMW i4 – and it’s bad news for the Tesla.

As more cars are starting to drive themselves, one element of a journey has continued to prove difficult to handle for full self-driving vehicles.

Parking.

So, with a range of vehicles now equipped with assisted driving features, electric vehicle expert RSymons ‘RSEV’ put them through a two-pronged test to see which is best.

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Tesla Model S falters in assisted parking test

Tesla appears to be confident in its FSD cars, expanding its Robotaxi fleet in Austin to get off the busy city streets and into the tighter suburbs.

But the electric vehicle masters have shown glimpses of low confidence with a few flaws on the roads, while the driverless cars escort their passengers.

Still, parking shouldn’t be an issue, right? If these cars can operate among thousands of others in the Austin city centre, surely they can park. Well…

Just like the old-school driving lesson maneuvers, this assisted parking test, highlighted on YouTube, was designed to see how the cars would handle parallel and perpendicular, or bay, parking.

And if you thought the Tesla software would breeze through this with flying colors, you’d be sorely mistaken.

Falling at the first parallel hurdle, the Tesla Model S equipped with FSD struggled to parallel park, leaving its nose out and freezing while adjusting its position.

The updated software was actually much worse than the AP1 system, which passed with ease.

“They wrote AP2 and FSD from scratch… it performs way worse than AP1,” RSymons said.

When it came to the perpendicular bay test, the Tesla Model S stuttered again, failing to identify the same parking bays that the Audi e‑tron, Ford Mustang Mach-E, and a BMW i4 all found.

Which car can park itself the best?

While Tesla came out worse in this particular test, on the opposite end of the scale was the Ford Mustang Mach-E, especially in the parallel portion.

“Impressive showing from Ford, I can’t believe how confident it is - it parks almost as well as a human would, if not better,” he added.

The Audi e‑tron managed to sneak into a tight spot near a pillar, showing nice control. The BMW i4 also handled both tasks with ease, getting tight to the curb and slotting itself neatly between two cars.

For the Tesla Model S, the AP1 software appeared to be the best option for assisted parking, although the new system will likely be improved upon soon.

The assisted parking system is, of course, never perfect, and some manufacturers have even pledged to pay any repair bill their FSD cars cause.

The main takeaway here, though, is that full self-driving cars are getting increasingly brilliant, and it’s impressive that the tech can park like this – even the Tesla Model S.

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