DIY PLA 3.0 Upgrade in Skoda Slavia: Park Assist, 360-degree sensors

Some people have the opinion that they can park the car better, but this is something that will beat my parking skills at least, when it comes to deciding the fit of the car and maintaining a parallel angle.

BHPian audioholic recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Park-Lenkung Assist - PLA 3.0 Upgrade:

This was a long pending post and has already led to some speculation. Hence will clear it all and also explain this feature in detail in this post. As the name goes, this system offers the following features:

• Park assist can steer the car in and out of a parking space after deciding its suitability to the car.
• Braking and acceleration is still in the hands of the driver, hence will go with both manual and AT cars
• Can perform emergency braking in case the driver misses braking. But this cancels the parking maneuver
• Apart from park assist, it offers a 360 degree parking sensor capability with 12 sensors around the car
• There is also another interesting feature which detects if you accidentally start rolling the car in neutral, and can apply brake if a collision is imminent and the speed is below 10kmph. This is pretty well thought of.

VAG parking systems are available in different configurations like 3K/4K/7K/8K/12K and here K means Kanal or Channel in German which obviously refers to the number of sensors in that system. The MQB family commonly is offered with 4/8/12K setups across the world while 3K we get in our market is rather rare. While the 8K OPS system offers features like auto detect and maneuver braking, it cant offer park assist for which a 12K setup is mandatory.

Me being a DIYer, the 8K upgrade was it and I didnt have plans to upgrade it. But I got to know from social media and a Delhi based installer, Eurocar Retrofits that they were able to successfully get PLA 3 working on a Virtus. Until then, I wasnt sure if the MQB A0 cars can support this given the various cost cutting measures that have been taken. For the PLA3 to successfully work, you need both the ESP and EPS to have a compatibility and specially the EPS to accept the steering commands that the PLA3 will issue. Surprisingly, both these components in my car were supporting parking assistance. Hence, thanks to this installer, I was sure that this will work in my car without already investing money on it. Also kudos to them since they entertained my queries without me being their customer and the research they had put in to verify what works. I now have a collection of these ECUs with me

The PLA3 needs 12 sensors, out of which I already had 8. What was needed were the side sensors on the front and rear bumpers. The PLA3 relies on the front side sensors to detect parking slots and this pair of sensors have a higher range of detection, upto 4.5m. The rear side sensors are used to monitor and maintain the gap to the kerb and tell the system when it is appropriate to make steering inputs during parallel parking.

The wiring of the system was almost the same as 8K, except that the additional wires for the 4 sensors had to be done and an additional parallel parking switch that needs to be wired. With the 10inch infotainment, both the PDC and PLA buttons are wired into the head unit and there are virtual buttons to operate the same. Hence, the net difference in terms of hardware for me was just 4 parking sensors, wiring and a new controller.

Installation is a ditto of the 8K PDC install I have written about. However, the front side sensors require a bigger bumper punch, since the sensors come with a surround shield to focus the ultrasonic beam and achieve the 4.5m range. This again required removal of the bumpers and a lot of trim to wire the entire loom from front bumper to the dashboard and then the rear bumper. Thanks to my friend Sunny for helping out with this as well as painting the new sensors to body colour.

Front sensor with its surround:

Rear sensor which is similar to the rest:

Coming to the ECU itself, the 8K OPS system is removed and we replace the 12k OPS system ECU in its place, which is just snap fit. As for the controller itself, this time I decided to go with an OE part from Europe instead of the Chinese controller and only imported the sensors and wiring loom from China, since there is no OE option for the wiring loom at least. It took some experimenting and rewiring the switches to a virtual switch on the head unit.

For the older MQB or PQ cars, retrofitting a PLA system meant that the ABS sensors on the rear wheels had to be changed to support bi-directional speed read out. But thankfully/wierdly in the MQB A0IN cars, I already had this from the factory, which meant I did not have to change the ABS sensors. I had verified this from the ABS module which had it already coded in and could read rear wheel speed in both directions. All these just made my decision easier, since the only major change I had to do was to drill those four extra holes in the bumper. Worst case, the loss would be the parking assist while I would still have a surround view of the parking sensors.

Thus, in one day, we opened up the car, rewired the new harness and the new sensors, and the mechanical job was done. Now, the other part was to code the various components to get everything right.

NOTE: For EPS and instrument cluster coding, I did it via ODIS and not via VCDS. Hence I cant help with the correct coding bits since in ODIS, a plain text coding system is followed and it does not directly show the bit wise break down of what has to be changed. There is a parallel parking assistance option in both EPS and Instrument cluster which needs to be enabled in ODIS and thats it.

After this, the first difference I could notice was the parking display now showed the sides of the car in both reverse and forward displays:

However, the side segments dont appear all the time. There is some wierd logic to it.

Also, it must be noted that the side sensors are only four in number, but the system can also display the status of the immediate sides of the car when it is moving, but translating the distance detected by the side sensors along the car as it moves forward/backward and also accounting for steering angle. Hence, it can predict the movement of the obstacle relative to that of the car and accurately also depict what is the status of the sides of the car.

The additional PLA button is enabled on the head unit via an adaptation channel in the virtual switches domain. While the PDC button can be used to turn on and off the park display, PLA button is to trigger Park assist in different modes.

Functioning:
The PLA 3.0 can perform the following functions:

• Parallel parking into a space and decision on suitability
• Parallel parking out of a space
• Perpendicular park in reverse/forward direction
• Angled parking in, based on the angle of the gap present - this is innovative
• Perpendicular park take over, when already starting a parking move
• Maneuver braking
• Rollback detection

These features work flawlessly and as good or even better than a human can park. I have used parking systems across generations and this is pretty good with two main USPs - 1. Accuracy of detection - You dont have to crawl slowly across a slot for it to detect. Parallel parking slots can be detected even at above 25kmph and perpendicular slots at a slower speed and 2. Speed of parking - The steering inputs are very quick and accurate which wont slow down the process.

Due to the above USPs, this is very practical to use and not just a party trick which will take some time to master. The UI is also quite simple, depicted in this post.

Usage:
Usage is as simple as it can get. As you approach a place where you want to park your car, the PLA button has to be pressed. The system begins searching for a slot. By default, left hand driving means left hand parking slots so it is searched for. This can be overridden by selecting the turn indicator in case the parking is to be done on the opposite side. Since the side sensors have a good range, we dont have to drive too close to the parked cars to determine a slot.

Slot search in progress:

The system automatically analyses what sort of parking is possible for a given slot and suggests these options:

Possibility of parallel parking:

You can also notice that there is an icon that indicates there are additional modes possible, by pressing the PLA button again.

Perpendicular parking in reverse, with additional option possible

Perpendicular parking nose front - The UI is a bit confusing, but it means, the car can park itself nose front even in an angled arrangement, which is superb

Its easy to toggle between these modes. Once the driver finalises the type of parking, they just have to let go of the steering and slot into reverse. Then the show begins. There is a progress bar and a final indication to brake. In an AT car, just letting go of the brakes and controlling movement with brake is sufficient. Once a maneuver needs braking and gear change, the same is indicated. Depending on the situation, the car sometimes completes the entire maneuver in two moves, and can go higher as the gap narrows down.

Here are some videos showing the system in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG1JGSH4ghI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K2omfIhnS8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SENevHp4dog

There are lot more scenarios to explore. But I am extremely happy with the results of the hard work. Some people have the opinion that they can park the car better, but this is something that will beat my parking skills at least, when it comes to deciding the fit of the car and maintaining a parallel angle. Given it has German engineering roots, its a very well thought about system and not something we can easily find flaws in. I would be happy to answer any queries, except one thing - the price. The reason is because, I have made a mix and match of components and have support from friends which actually would cost a lot of money without. Hence, me mentioning the cost would not really make sense as a comparison.

I still need to properly find a slot where I can park nose in and with an angle. That will be very cool to watch.

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