How Orikan powered Australia’s first in-car parking app for Porsche

For premium vehicle owners, the gap between the driving experience and the parking experience has long been jarring. A Porsche driver navigating with precision and comfort arrives at their destination – and then joins a queue at a ticket machine, handles a paper stub, or waits at a boom gate for a transaction to clear.

Porsche Cars Australia recognised this as an opportunity. The objective was straightforward: extend the quality of the Porsche driving experience all the way through to the moment the vehicle comes to rest. That meant parking needed to be as seamless, contactless, and effortless as everything else Porsche drivers expect.

The technology to make that happen already existed within Orikan’s platform. The challenge was integrating it natively into the vehicle environment – specifically, into the Porsche Communication Management (PCM) system via Apple CarPlay.

The Porsche Park app, developed in conjunction with Orikan, was built to work directly through the in-car PCM touchscreen, accessible via Apple CarPlay. The entire parking journey – from discovery to departure – was consolidated into a single, in-vehicle experience.

The app delivered three core capabilities:

Navigation

Drivers open the app within CarPlay, select a Porsche Park partner car park, and receive turn-by-turn navigation immediately. Participating sites are searchable by name or location, and frequently visited locations can be saved for future use – all without the driver needing to interact with a separate device.

Contactless access

On arrival, the app detects the car park entrance automatically via Bluetooth and displays available entry lanes on the PCM screen. The driver selects a lane and opens the boom gate directly from the centre console – no paper ticket, no tap-and-go terminal, no physical interaction required.

Integrated payment

Once inside, the app monitors the parking session in real time. Duration and cost are visible at any point via the mobile companion app. On departure, the same Bluetooth-triggered process handles exit and finalises payment automatically, with a transaction summary delivered immediately.

The initial rollout focused on Melbourne, with a curated selection of high-profile partner sites including the Melbourne Arts Centre and Rialto Tower – locations well aligned with the Porsche customer profile. Participating Porsche Park sites also offered discounted parking rates exclusively for app users, and the platform provided information on nearby non-barrier car parks in the Melbourne CBD.

Porsche Park launched as the first Australian-built Porsche app available in CarPlay – a distinction that reflected both the ambition of the partnership and the capability of the underlying technology platform.

“With the technology readily available, it makes no sense to have queues of people at ticket machines or blocking the boom gate. It’s great to see forward-thinking companies like Porsche implement it into their cars.”

– Orikan (formerly UbiPark), on the Porsche Park launch

“Porsche owners are now able to experience a completely new way of parking. We continue to develop technology that enhances the Porsche driving experience.”

– Sam Curtis, Managing Director and CEO, Porsche Cars Australia

“The goal is to offer our customers unique smart mobility experiences. By adding services like Porsche Park via Apple CarPlay, we are expanding the digital portfolio to include new service models and offer a more holistic Porsche experience.”

– Matthias Prilipp, Product Manager – New Technologies, Porsche Cars Australia

The Porsche Park project was significant beyond its novelty. It validated several capabilities that remain central to how Orikan approaches connected parking today:

• Deep integration with third-party platforms – the ability to embed parking functionality natively into a vehicle OS, not just a standalone app
• Bluetooth-triggered access – removing the need for any physical interaction at the barrier, a model that has since become an expectation rather than an exception
• End-to-end session management – monitoring, billing, and reconciliation handled automatically from entry to exit
• Premium partner alignment – demonstrating that smart parking technology is not just an operational tool, but a component of a premium brand experience

These capabilities are now part of a broader platform that Orikan continues to develop and deploy across parking operators, hospitals, universities, councils, airports, and commercial precincts across Australia, New Zealand, and North America.

The Porsche Park launch in 2021 was an early proof point for what connected car parking could look like at scale. The underlying technology – Bluetooth access, mobile payment, real-time session monitoring, and seamless platform integration – has since matured significantly and is no longer limited to premium vehicle partnerships.

Orikan’s mobile entry and exit solutions bring the same frictionless access model to a wide range of facilities and vehicle types, enabling operators to offer a genuinely contactless parking experience without requiring drivers to interact with physical infrastructure at the barrier.

For operators exploring what connected and mobile-first parking could mean for their facility, Orikan’s mobile entry and exit solutions provide a practical starting point – built on the same platform that powered Australia’s first in-car parking app.