California garage parks and charges your EV automatically with no human assistance at all
Published on Feb 22, 2026 at 2:17 AM (UTC+4)
by Henry Kelsall
Last updated on Feb 19, 2026 at 9:46 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Emma Matthews
A California garage can park and charge an EV automatically, without any help from the owner of the car.
This might sound like the work of pure fantasy, but it’s really not: the Menlo Park Lume apartment complex features a radical new type of garage.
Complete with a robot EV recharging arm, the garage lets owners simply drop off their car, with the garage taking care of the rest.
Developed by Sotefin Automated Parking, the company uploaded a video onto YouTube showing the unusual new car park in action.
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How does the California garage park and charge an EV automatically?
The parking lot opened in 2025, and it was located in a FEMA flood zone.
This meant developers could not build below-grade parking.
A zoning height restriction also limited the area available for parking, yet this three-level garage offers spaces for over 450 vehicles.
Drivers enter the garage and leave their car at the entrance.
The system then ferries the cars, be they an EV or otherwise, to the first available slot.
If the car is electric, drivers can request a charging session via an app on their phones.
The car is taken to a charging bay, and then a robotic arm plugs into the EV to recharge it.
When this is done, the car is moved to a regular parking spot.
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A video showed the parking garage in action
Sotefin Automated Parking is a Swiss company, and they posted a video of the garage in action.
In the video, a Tesla owner drops their car off, and it’s then moved through the garage via the automated system.
The video also showed the car being taken to the charging station.
After being dropped off, a robotic arm appears and opens up the charging port on the EV.
It then places the charging arm straight into the electric car.
After it was charged, we then saw the car taken away again and placed into a regular car parking spot.
It’s an incredibly clever system, and takes away all the hassle of finding a space for a car.
It must feel weird, though, to see your car being dragged away by a machine in the California garage.
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Henry joined the Supercar Blondie team in February 2025, and since then has covered a wide array of topics ranging from EVs, American barn finds, and the odd Cold War jet. He’s combined his passion for cars with his keen interest in motorsport and his side hustle as a volunteer steam locomotive fireman at a leading heritage steam railway in England.
