DHL and VW launch car-boot delivery pilot

DHL Parcel and Volkswagen are launching a joint pilot project in Berlin in which Volkswagen will deploy 50 VW Polos to be used as mobile addresses for the delivery of their DHL parcels.
The project partners have worked in recent months to develop and test a solution for in-car delivery. The vehicles are fitted with the required equipment for in-car delivery, called ‘We Deliver’ by Volkswagen. To use the new service, customers need to register with DHL Parcel and enter their trunk as the delivery location in their customer profile.
“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,” says Achim Dünnwald, CEO, DHL Parcel. “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 personalised processes to make the sending and receiving parcels even easier for our customers.”
The VW Polo driver will be notified via email about the delivery process and receive a delivery notice when a parcel has been delivered to the vehicle’s trunk. During the ordering process in an online shop, the driver can specify a two-hour time slot between 10am and 9pm during which DHL will deliver the parcel. For delivery, the vehicle will need to be parked in a place accessible to the parcel courier. Possible delivery sites include the office parking lot, a park-and-ride facility, or any other address at which the vehicle is located during the time slot specified during the order.
The DHL parcel courier receives the delivery location information from the DHL Delivery app, which provides 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 cancelled. Not only can the VW Polo drivers receive parcels, they can also leave returns in the trunk to be picked up.