Christmas shopping might have just gotten a little bit easier—or, weirder—for Volvo owners, as the company announced recently that it will provide an in-car delivery service beginning this year. In other words, Volvo owners will have the option to give strangers access to their cars for the sake of delivery ease.
Sounds like a perfectly logical tradeoff.
Volvo teamed up with Nordic postal service PostNord and a couple of online stores in order to debut the new system, and it’ll essentially give postal workers one-time access to customer cars in order to make deliveries. The idea follows in the footsteps of Audi and Amazon, who began a similar program earlier this year. The system will work by virtue of a “digital key” that provides access to vehicles after products are ordered online, and the key will be null once the delivery occurs.
Only customers in the manufacturer’s hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden who subscribe to Volvo On Call have access to the service right now, and the company plans to eventually include additional areas in Sweden and other countries on its list. Volvo also hopes to add new companies to supply its delivery lineup in the future.
To be quite honest, it’s a weird concept to me. I’ll take the shopping stress or missed home deliveries over giving someone, anyone, access to my car, even for just a one-time delivery. But hey, the future is a weird place—a weird place full of self-driving cars on both the streets and the racetracks.
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