Volvo wants to deliver online shopping to your car

Anyone who’s ever sat at home waiting for a package to be delivered knows what a pain it can be. It would be much more convenient if you could go about your day and your package could be delivered to your car right?

If you answered yes to that question, you’re obviously on the same wavelength as the bigwigs at Volvo. The Swedish car maker this week announced a partnership with Swedish start-up ‘urb-it‘, which it claims will allow for in-car delivery of online shopping in under two hours.

Under the terms of the agreement, urb-it’s vetted delivery personnel — called urbers — are given a one-time digital key which grants them access to your car so they can drop off the package.

According to a press release issued by Volvo, urb-it employs students and other part-time workers who get paid per delivery, and uses geo-location and availability to select a personal ‘urber’, as the delivery people are known.

Each urber is strictly vetted by urb-it to ensure high-class service and traceability. The buyer always knows the name of the individual urber who is delivering their order. Once the urber receives the order details on their mobile device, they collect the merchandise from the store by presenting an order code. They then take the package and deliver it directly to the car in under two hours.

“It’s really quite simple, which is what makes it so effective. You shop online from an urb-it enabled store and simply choose to have the shopping delivered to your Volvo. This can be at a pre-determined time that suits you, or as quickly as possible. You can follow the collection and delivery process on your mobile device if you wish, or just wait for confirmation of delivery. If the package is not delivered within two hours, delivery is free,” says Björn Annwall, Senior Vice President Marketing Sales and Service at Volvo Car Group.

The really interesting thing here is how Volvo’s digital key technology has allowed it to expand its in-car delivery service, launched commercially on Black Friday 2015 together with Sweden’s largest distribution company and an online food store.

The partnership with urb-it could help it sell the idea to a much wider audience, given the vetting the urbers go through and the ability for the people who made the orders to

Volvo Cars is adding urb-it to its in-car delivery services in Stockholm City for an initial trial period during 2016. Availability to Volvo owners will increase as the urb-it service expands to several European cities this year and to over 200 cities worldwide by 2025.