Volkswagen has confirmed it is developing its car-based park assist system for commercial vehicle use.

It is looking at the system being launched this week on the VW Tiguan, after it was pioneered on the Touran, for the next generation Caddy and Crafter vans.

The £450 optional park assist uses sensors, cameras and computer-links to the electically assisted steering system to parallel reverse the vehicle into a parking space on either side of the road.

The driver simply switches on park assist when approaching a line of parked vehicles with suitable gaps and the electronics measure gaps, alerting the driver if there is one large enough for the vehicle.

Once a suitable gap is found the driver simply takes hands of the wheel and lets park assist take over turning the wheel as necessary to slip into the gap. Only the speed of the reverse and any forward correction is controlled by the driver.

Engineers have set up the Tiguan park assist to work up to 1.5 metres out from the line of parked vehicles and to find a gap a little over 1 metre longer than the vehicle.

Settings can be altered in the factory so a wide van with rear opening doors might need a longer space behind than a metre.

The driver can turn off the system or manually reverse steer it if desired.

On cars it is being triumphed as particularly useful for drivers who tow and the Tiguan has a 1.7 tonne limit which can be increased to 2.5 tonne.

But the wider application for vans without any windows and limited vision in mirrors, is encouraging VW to look at the fitting for its commercials ranges.

A VW CV spokesman said, “We are looking at park assist for commercial vehicles but we are not yet able to say when it will be introduced into the market.”