A method for autonomously parking or un-parking a motor vehicle includes the steps of locating the motor vehicle within a parking area, setting a destination location within the parking area, generating and setting a path from the location of the motor vehicle to the destination location, and autonomously driving the motor vehicle along the path. The path is generated by (a) generating a first set of nodes from the location of the motor vehicle, (b) assigning a cost to each node in the first set of nodes, (c) selecting a lowest cost node from the first set of nodes, (d) generating another set of nodes from the selected node, (e) assigning a cost to each of the newly generated nodes, (f) selecting a lowest cost node from all of the nodes, and (g) repeating steps (d)-(f) until a lowest cost node is located at the destination location.