Volvo has developed an in-car delivery system
Volvo has just made it much easier to get your online purchases delivered to you, by taking them to your Volvo.
According to the Swedish carmaker it has demonstrated the ‘first delivery of food to the car’ in the world, and they were not talking about drive-thru either. Instead they’re refering to a whole new shopping system through which anything can be delivered to vehicles – from balony sandwitches to board games – without the need for the owner to actually be present. That last part sounds a bit dodgy doesn’t it?
The now Chinese-owned brand made this possible by virtue of its “digital key” system which operates by using the Volvo On Call telematics interface which allows a courier or a postal delivery worker to notify the owner via smartphone or tablet that access is required in order to make a delivery to their car. The owner then hands over a digital key, which allows for a drop-off to occur and then once used, the key disappears.
According to Volvo, around sixty percent of online shoppers experienced problems with item delivery in 2013, with more than half of them were not at home to receive their deliveries. So with Volvo’s technology this could be done in at least one other place, your car.
This technology has been tested during a pilot programme of 100 participants, the company saying that 86 of them said that it saved them time while 92 of them found it more convenient to receive deliveries to their car than at home.
The benefit of turning the car into a pickup and drop-off zone means that goods can now be delivered to persons as opposed to places and the system shows some promise for the future.
Considering the amount of information that Volvo has offered it is easy to point out potential problems such as hackers but on the other hand no roll-out timeline was offered so we hope that they’ve taken te various potential problems into consideration.
