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KOTI - Korea Transport institute-
# Car wash became an industry along with development of automotive industry!
Auto car wash cleans the cars within few minutes. Especially, an auto car wash that first emerged in 1960s changed the paradigm of car wash industry.
Let’s find out type and mechanism of auto car wash and changes in car washing!
# First, an auto car wash is largely divided into tunnel-type (the car enters a huge machine) and gate-type (car is fixed and machine moves front and back).
Although tunnel-type takes up more installation space, it is faster. While the gate-type is relatively slow, it takes up less space and the machine price is relatively cheap.
# Auto car washes can wash cars regardless of size and model thanks to the sensor! When the operator enters the car model before washing, the sensor reads the car size and washes with the appropriate water pressure. Of course, machines are not delicate as human hands.
So, there might be small scratches or car damage due to sensor error.
# For demanding customers, a touchless (uses special degertent and high-pressure water to wash off pollutants and dry with hot wind) car wash emerged recently.
Although the touchless car wash rarely involves surface scratches, it is limited in removing pollutants completely. It also uses more water and more expensive than other washes.
# In the early stage, cars were luxuries for riches. Then, Ford released Model T in 1908 and ordinary people started buying, driving, and washing their own cars.
As a result, the first car wash emergend at Ditroit, the United States in 1914. Although the cars were washed manually, the car wash enhanced efficiency by adopting Ford’s conveyor system and moving the cars to workers in order.
# Starting from mid-1940s, many semi-automatic car washes emerged with ceiling sprinklers for water washing and fans for drying.
In 1950s, an American entreprenur and engineer developed a tunnel-type auto car wash system. The modern auto wash was made by two German entrepreneurs in 1964.
# Afterwards, various auto car washes were made and car wash was popularized enough for every gas station to have one. This rapidly increased the industry scale.
In case of Korea, machines were imported until mid-1990s. Then, car washes were gradually localized starting from 1996.
# Some experts warn that auto car washes could be an issue in upcoming self-driving era. For better driving performance, it is neccessary to remove dusts and stains on sensors that detect surrounding situation. However, auto car wash’s detergent residues and high-pressure water may damage or destroy the sensors.
# For these reasons, self-driving car manufacturers recommend on the manual car wash. Self-driving technology without user intervention ironically needs the active intervention from the driver when washing the car.
In order to relieve the inconvenience of washing the car manually in the future, there needs to be an auto wash optimized for the self-driving cars.
* This card news have been made after partial correction and supplementation of “Past, Present, and Future of Car Wash” from Monthly KOTI Magazine on Transport May 2021 Vol.May 2021.