It seems every company at CES is announcing complex systems that will help your car drive itself in the not-so-distant-future. Ford is trying something different, displaying some interesting incremental improvements for the present. It just announced a service that uses shared data from cars across the city to help others find open parking spots. That will partner well with two other experimental apps.

The City Dash app tells users when a car is illegally parked and will recommend an alternative spot. Appy Parking helps find parking locations for cars and motorcycles. Not only that, it lets users know the hours street parking and parking garages are available, and even allows parking payments to be made directly from the smartphone.

"Parking in any city […] is a complete and utter nightmare," says Dan Hubert, co-founder of Appy Parking and pictured above.

It appears Ford's programs are still being tested and London. While the self-driving car is the most desirable future, these experiments look to be much easier and faster to institute on a massive scale in the meantime.