Increase Land Use at Auto Dealerships with Automated Parking

Auto dealers in urban and expanding markets can find themselves faced with rising land costs, inventory constrained sites, non-renewable leases for off-site lots lost to development, and overcrowded parking lots that make it hard to exhibit inventory and retrieve vehicles.

As auto dealerships are completely reliant on inventory to support sales and require the space necessary to store service vehicles, site constraints can significantly impact the dealer’s ability to increase sales and service a larger customer base, thus constricting its ability to grow revenues.

CityLift offers design solutions to increase inventory with semi and fully automated systems that can reduce the overall footprint required for inventory and drastically increase a sites ability to carry and increase inventory. Site efficiency gains can also streamline inventory management, increase sales and provide additional space to store service vehicles.

Automated parking offers better use of space, which leaves room for more services and inventory.

With more parking space, dealerships can not only accommodate more customer cars and eliminate off-site parking, but more of their own inventory. Dealers can show off their full range of models, all in one place, and sell more cars right off of the lot with much more inventory on hand.
Additionally, automated parking leaves space to expand other elements of a dealership. The service center, for example, can accommodate more clients. Service centers can also afford to store more parts and equipment with the additional space that our systems can provide at the ground level. The best locations for car dealerships don’t always have a lot of land, automation allows dealers to fully maximize their current available space.

There are also economic and environmental benefits.

Accelerated tax depreciation makes automated parking economically appealing. Because parking lifts are considered equipment, they depreciate over a shorter period of time—approximately seven years—than that of a building. Thus, the returns after taxes are significantly larger, sooner.

Utilizing automated parking systems also offers an opportunity for differentiation and brand recognition, which draws in more consumers and improves overall economics. An additional benefit is that our systems allow for fewer emissions and less fuel consumption.

Automated parking offers risk and operating expense reductions, too.

CityLift Parking provides car storage systems that keeps your inventory cleaner and protected from harsh sunlight and weather, damage from poor inventory management and employees moving vehicles, avoids theft and vandalism, and gives you an environment that is safe and secure. These parking systems offer cost reduction, faster retrieval car times, all coupled with a smart method of tracking inventory.

Dealers are no stranger to on-site damage to new inventory from door dings, bumper scrapes and rim damage that happen because vehicles need to me moved multiple times by employees to retrieve vehicles in stacked lots. Not only are costs incurred from this damage, but additional expense in the inefficient use of employees’ time are incurred and the customer experience is lessened by the burden of walking in hot/cold/wet lots and waiting extended periods of time for the desired vehicle to be found and retrieved.

Automated parking lifts mean far less chances of damage occurring, streamline vehicle retrieval and will increase employee utilization and improve the customer experience while reducing the time to close and offering the sales team more time to service more customers.

CityLift knows new dealer construction.

At CityLift, we have direct experience implementing automated parking systems for dealerships. In one instance, we were able to double the inventory and spaces within the same footprint, and offer a smarter, more efficient way to retrieve vehicles. This dealer originally had a design for a 5-level conventional parking structure with cast-in-place concrete slabs. With our CityLift systems, we were able to omit the slabs, increase the parking levels from 5 to 7 with our puzzle and rack and rail solutions, while at the same time lowering the overall height of the structure, and reducing the cost per space over 30%.

CityLift was also able to provide decreased retrieval times of less than 5 minutes, with direct showroom access, as opposed to 15 minutes or more with the conventional parking design. The Owner was also able to accelerate depreciation of our system since this is considered equipment, as opposed to property.

In this case, we have been able to achieve a much faster ROI yield and a significant cost savings in operational expenses with a 100% increase in inventory and accelerated vehicle retrieval, which they estimate will allow sales to increase 40%-50%.

To take advantage of these benefits at your dealership, please call us today and tell us about your project. We would be happy to provide a design assessment and a free cost estimate, while explaining how we can offer you a custom solution to store vehicles efficiently and increase your annual revenue, while reducing operating expenses.

About CityLift Parking

At CityLift Parking, we bring 30 years of automated parking lift experience around the globe to the US.  With offices around the country, our automated parking lifts span the full range of product choices.  We work closely with our customers to design the best parking layout for them, partner to get their project approved, install the systems, and stand by our products by providing ongoing service. We also offer financing through our banking partners so the capital expenditure can be metered over time.

For more information, visit our website at www.cityliftparking.com or email us at contact@cityliftparking.com