DHL Parcel is partnering with car manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) to pilot car trunk deliveries to 50 VW Polo vehicles in Berlin, Germany.
Interested individuals must be at least 21 years old, have had a driver’s license for at least 12 months, live in Berlin, and be regular online shoppers. They can apply for the program online at www.deliver.we-vw.com.
The selected participants will receive a VW Polo that they can use to test the service for four weeks. The vehicles are already fitted with the required equipment for in-car delivery, called We Deliver. To use the new service, customers merely need to register with DHL Parcel, which takes place during the We Deliver application process, and enter their trunk as the delivery location in their customer profile at www.paket.de.
Achim Dünnwald, CEO of DHL Parcel, said, “Since we’ve already tested car-drop delivery successfully in other projects in Germany and continue to offer it for Smart drivers, we’re pleased to win Volkswagen as another partner our partnership allows us to offer this attractive service to an even broader target group.
“As an innovation leader in the parcel sector, our objective at DHL Parcel is to be able to offer in-car delivery as an option to as many recipients as possible in Germany, offering personalized processes to make the sending and receiving of parcels even easier for our customers.”
The driver of the VW Polo is notified about the delivery process via e-mail and receives a delivery notice when a parcel has been delivered to the vehicle’s trunk. During the ordering process, the driver can specify a two-hour time slot between 10:00am and 9:00pm during which DHL will deliver the parcel. For delivery, the vehicle needs to be parked in a place accessible to the parcel courier.
The DHL parcel courier receives the delivery location information from the DHL Delivery app, which provides the vehicle’s exact position via GPS. The app also issues a single-use, time-limited code to access the vehicle. In combination with the customer-specific car ID, which the recipient receives from Volkswagen and provides as part of the delivery address, the courier can open the vehicle’s trunk. Once the courier closes the trunk, the access code is canceled. Not only can the VW Polo drivers receive parcels, they can also leave returns in the trunk to be picked up.
In addition to this current pilot project with Volkswagen in Berlin, DHL Parcel continues to offer in-car delivery with Smart in Stuttgart, Cologne, Bonn and also Berlin.
September 6, 2017