Visual rendering of the “Future Parking Lot – Hangting·Dragonfly Park” project.
October 29th Hangzhou Parking Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd.”), which has been upgraded to a first-tier subsidiary directly under QianTou Group, has officially been listed. This state‑owned parking industry giant, founded in 2016, is now embarking on a new phase of development.
This year, “urban parking lots” have become a key component of the “New Infrastructure” initiative. At the recently concluded Sixth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen in 2019, “5G‑enabled parking” emerged as a major topic of discussion.
Why has the parking industry attracted so much attention, and what new opportunities does it hold? From its humble beginnings to its confident aspirations, QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd., as a pioneer in the parking sector, has presented its own answer.
Addressing the pain points of parking
Exploring Smart Parking Solutions
Parking is a major challenge—this is a widespread pain point in today’s big cities, and Hangzhou is no exception.
To alleviate the “parking shortage,” in April 2014, the “Notice on Issuing the Measures for Encouraging and Promoting the Industrialization of Public Parking Lots in Hangzhou’s Urban Areas” was released, encouraging and guiding private capital to enter the parking industry. Since then, parking has emerged as an entirely new sector.
Focusing on the public’s livelihood and addressing urban pain points, QianTou Group, as a state-owned enterprise, bears an inescapable responsibility. On December 19, 2016, QianTou Group established Hangzhou Parking Industry Co., Ltd., embarking on a new chapter of exploration in the parking sector.
As car ownership continues to rise year after year, the shortage of parking spaces has become substantial, and accelerating the development of parking facilities is no small feat. How to make better use of existing parking resources and boost their utilization efficiency has been a key question that QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd. has been pondering since its inception. On January 4, 2018, “Gongting,” a city‑wide shared parking platform developed by QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd., was officially launched.
“Gongting” takes all parking facilities in the city—excluding public parking lots—as its resource base, consolidating fragmented parking information and idle parking spaces across government agencies, enterprises, institutions, residential communities, and private individuals. Through the “Gongting” platform, it enables stakeholders—including parking space owners, property management entities, and the platform itself—to share benefits equitably.
Today, QianTou·Hangting Shares has successfully brought together thousands of parking facilities and amassed data on hundreds of thousands of parking spaces. Once isolated and disconnected, these parking spots are now interconnected through the company’s self-developed digital platform, creating a network that, amid the city’s bustling traffic, “draws light with faint glimmers and illuminates even more faint glimmers.”
To enhance drivers’ parking experience, at the end of July this year, QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd. collaborated with relevant authorities to launch a nationally pioneering City Brain–powered parking system in Hangzhou and introduced its “leave first, pay later” convenient parking service. With this system, after linking their license plate information for the first time, drivers can exit the parking facility without making payment upfront, significantly improving traffic flow.
As of mid-October, the Hangzhou City Brain parking system had registered over 400,000 vehicle‑license‑plate users and integrated more than 300,000 parking spaces across over 2,000 parking facilities, including those at Kerry Center, Hubin Intime, Hangzhou Department Store, Xixi Wetland, and several public parking lots funded by both municipal and district-level investments.
Cutting-edge “cloud-based” parking garage
Future parking lots will be fun and engaging.
In addition to actively revitalizing existing parking resources across the community, QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd. has also invested heavily in constructing a large number of new parking lots and multi‑storey parking garages.
Located on the shores of Jinsha Lake, the Xiasha Parking Complex is Hangzhou’s first-ever integrated parking facility, built with an investment of 180 million yuan from QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd. The project spans eight levels—six above ground and two underground—and offers a total of 480 parking spaces. With its sleek, avant‑garde design, the complex completely redefines conventional perceptions of parking structures. Moreover, visitors can not only park here but also enjoy car washes, shopping, and coffee.
Located in the Qingchun Square commercial district at the city center, across the street from the Shaw Yifu Hospital, the “Future Parking Lot—Hangting·Dragonfly Park” project broke ground at the end of last year. This project can be regarded as a flagship development for QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd. All kinds of visions for the future of parking can find concrete manifestations here.
Dragonfly Park is currently the largest submerged AGV‑robot parking project in China, with a total floor area of 24,150 m², four underground levels, and a total of 500 public parking spaces. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.
Its architectural design is exceptionally bold: the entire structure seems to emerge from the ground, composed of ten hyperbolic, hourglass-shaped tower blocks. It is entirely open to the public, with no clear distinction between interior and exterior spaces, and even employs an unmanned, intelligent robotic parking system, in which robots transport vehicles between underground levels to their designated parking spots, greatly freeing up car owners.
For example, the basement level of the parking garage serves as a vehicle‑transfer zone: drivers simply drive their cars into the designated receiving area and can then leave with peace of mind. The rest is handled by a robot, which transports the vehicle to a designated parking level—completing the entire process in about 90 seconds.
When picking up their car, owners simply need to initiate the “pick-up” process on their smartphone 1.5 minutes in advance. By the time they arrive at the designated pickup zone, the vehicle has already been delivered by a robotic system and is waiting quietly. Such efficiency is something today’s car owners can hardly imagine.
As a result, the parking facility will achieve complete separation of pedestrians and vehicles. Since vehicle owners do not need to enter the parking area, there is no need for lighting, ventilation, or other such systems, and aisle space can also be saved. From a fire‑safety perspective, should a fire alarm be triggered in the parking zone, oxygen‑depletion suppression can be implemented promptly, making this design significantly safer than conventional underground parking garages.
Wu Xiaoqiang, Vice Chairman and General Manager of Hangzhou Parking Industry Co., Ltd., stated: “In addition, the rooftop of the parking tower will feature a sky garden, creating a new social space while also reserving area for the future conversion into a parking platform for ‘flying cars.’ Moving forward with tenant recruitment, we are exploring the introduction of leisure‑oriented businesses such as cafés and go‑kart tracks, with the aim of transforming this facility into a vibrant urban gathering place.”
The six core business segments are thriving.
The prospects for parking big data are promising.
“Following the company’s upgrade, building on the groundwork laid in the initial phase of parking‑industry incubation, we will focus on six core business areas: online and offline parking operations management, parking‑industry consulting, investment and construction of parking facilities, big‑data research and application, asset investment management, and the development of ancillary industry platforms,” said Wu Xiaoqiang.
At present, QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd. has partnered with Hikvision to jointly develop intelligent parking solutions. In the future, should these products gain market acceptance, the company may establish a production line and further deepen its R&D and manufacturing efforts in the parking‑facility sector.
Among the six core business segments, big data research and development and its applications hold the greatest potential. “In Hangzhou alone, there are over a million vehicle owners. Going forward, each time a car is parked, it will generate data that gets recorded in our backend system. The value of this data is self‑evident; we can leverage it across a wide range of use cases to deliver numerous convenient services,” said Wu Xiaoqiang.
In 2019, against the backdrop of Hangzhou’s ambition to become the “No. 1 City for the Digital Economy,” the “City Brain Parking System” emerged as a flagship initiative for QianTou Parking, driving the development of diversified digital parking solutions. This time, the industry‑wide effort expanded from a single‑player approach led by municipally‑owned state‑capital enterprises to a collaborative ecosystem involving 12 districts—including the West Lake Scenic Area and the Qiantang New Area—alongside private enterprises. QianTou·Hangting Co., Ltd. is working hand in hand with all stakeholders to strengthen end‑to‑end connectivity across urban parking and the broader digital economy.
Just how cutting-edge is this “City Brain Parking System”? According to Wu Xiaoqiang, in addition to the already operational “leave first, pay later” feature, the system will soon support a range of advanced parking applications, including parking guidance, reverse car‑finding, parking space reservation, and shared parking.
Unlike conventional map‑based navigation, parking guidance systems leverage cloud computing to optimize guidance information, significantly boosting efficiency. This means the system can accurately track the total number of parking spaces across the city and, through big‑data analytics, calculate the probability of available spots at any given time in each parking facility. Such insights enable residents to plan their trips in advance, greatly reducing the likelihood of blindly entering a lot only to find no vacancies—and further enhancing the efficient use of urban road resources. “These data are critical for urban management and can help alleviate the ‘parking shortage’ problem,” says Wu Xiaoqiang, who remains confident about the future prospects of the “City Brain Parking System.”
