What If Your Parking Could Earn Until You Needed It Back?

Your lot was built for your busiest hour. Its earning potential extends beyond it.

A 200-space lot that’s half empty from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. has 800 unused space-hours each night. The spaces exist. The pavement is paid for. The question is whether someone needs that location during those hours.

Autonomous fleets introduce a potential customer with an unusual capability: their vehicles can relocate without waiting for a driver to return.

That creates an opportunity to offer parking around the changing needs of a property.

Offer capacity as it becomes available

An owner might have room for 40 fleet vehicles in the morning, 10 around lunch and none during an evening event.

For that capacity to be useful, both sides need a clear agreement. The owner controls availability, access and departure requirements. The fleet needs to know how long it can stay and where vehicles can go next.

This is the coordination XoomPark is building.

Owners could earn during quieter periods without permanently allocating the same spaces to a fleet. Fleets could access a network of locations instead of relying entirely on fixed sites.

The critical requirement is dependable departure. A booking system can admit a vehicle. A useful operating system also has to manage the end of its stay.

An empty space needs a reason to be used

An empty lot alone is not a business opportunity. Its location must do something useful for the fleet.

Our guiding principle is that robots should wait near people. We explored the passenger side in The Robotaxi Should Be Waiting When the Train Arrives.

For property owners, that means evaluating their location in relation to nearby activity. Could vehicles waiting here serve a station, hotel district, residential neighborhood or venue? Can they reach those riders easily? Does the property have capacity at the times the fleet needs it?

The match is between a place, a time and an operating need.

A property with modest availability in the right location could be more useful than a much larger lot far from demand.

Waiting time can also be charging time

If a vehicle is already stopping between rides, that stop may offer an opportunity to charge.

We use your unused stalls, never fill them so a retail customer can’t charge, and never make you go over your monthly peak.

The goal is to combine useful waiting with useful charging near riders. Whether that works depends on the expected stop length, equipment, charging cost and arrangements for connecting and releasing the vehicle.

Existing chargers are one starting point. Properties with suitable electrical capacity may warrant further investigation.

Parking owners do not need chargers to participate. Waiting space can have value on its own. But where charging fits, it gives fleets another reason to use the location.

Why we started mapping San Francisco

Finding suitable properties means looking at demand, parking access and power together.

Our first San Francisco map places estimated activity alongside PG&E’s published grid-capacity data.¹ It helps us start asking more specific questions about where fleet waiting and charging might fit.

The map is a screening tool. A promising area still needs a suitable property, an interested owner and a fleet with a reason to use it.

Grid capacity also does not establish the power available at an individual building or parking facility. That requires checking the property’s electrical service and the relevant utility requirements.

The next step is taking promising locations from a map into actual site and fleet discussions.

The owner keeps control

Participation should start with the owner’s business requirements:

• How many spaces can be offered, and during which hours?
• What notice is required to reduce that allocation?
• Which vehicles and activities are permitted?
• How will arrivals, departures and exceptions be handled?

XoomPark’s role is to turn those requirements into arrangements fleets can use, with clear responsibilities on both sides.

The opportunity is to make existing parking more productive while preserving its purpose for the property.

Have space available for part of the day? List your property free. Tell us its available hours, access conditions and whether charging is already on site.

About this first version: our San Francisco demand heatmap uses restaurants, bars, hotels and venues as indicators of potential activity, not actual rideshare trip data. It is an early estimate, not a validated demand forecast. Planned additions include better demand data, parcels, zoning, surrounding uses, hazard checks and existing chargers. Power availability and charging suitability must be confirmed at each property.