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Introduction to Automatic Car Washes

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Many Americans treat their cars as nicely as they treat their bodies, so it might help to think of an automatic car wash as a luxurious spa or a jacuzzi bath for your automobile. Of course, the appeal of automatic car washes is that they’re luxurious for both you and your car; all you do is sit comfortably in your quickly becoming clean car.

An automatic car wash is a car wash in which you drive into a tunnel-like bay, and wait while machines spray your car with a sequence of water, soap, and wax. Some car washes offer additional features as well, but this is the basic model.

Most Americans, however, are familiar with automatic car washes. You see them attached to gas stations and convenience stores, as stand-alone enterprises, or as one of the bays at a self-service car wash complex. You may even have fun memories of automatic car washes as a child—the thunderous noise of high-pressure water hitting the car, the dizzying image of whirring brushes, the claustrophobic feeling from the foam-colored windows.

People have had those experiences for nearly seventy years. The first car wash was Automated Laundry, started in 1914 by a pair of brothers in (where else?) Detroit. It was twenty-five more years, however, before anyone opened a fully automatic car wash.

There are two primary types of automatic car washes in the United States. We will generalize regarding the two, so a quick explanation of their differences might be helpful:

• In-Bay Automatic: You drive into these car washes and park. Then, a set of rotating nozzles cleans all areas of your car.
• Conveyor: Conveyor belt car washes, on the other hand, have stationary machines and move your car. You stop your car on the conveyor belt and leave the car in neutral; the conveyor belt then moves your car forward through a series of stations.

In addition, it is important to mention touchless, or no-touch, car washes, which are a subcategory within both of the above styles. Touchless car washes use high-pressure water and detergents rather than actual brushes to scrub your car. This method protects your paint but the cleaning itself is not quite as efficient.

Next Page: How does an automatic car wash compare to other car wash options?

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