When ordering, Amazon customers will indicate the rough location of the vehicle and desired delivery time. A DHL delivery agent will later be notified of the exact location via a smartphone app.
The agent is granted one-time keyless access to the boot of the vehicle and when the boot is shut again, it locks automatically. The customer must agree for their vehicles to be tracked for a specific timeframe and is notified via email upon successful delivery.
“The security of the car and of customer data has top priority for Audi,” said Ulrich Hackenberg, Audi board member for technical development.
Those involved in the trial would need a specially adapted vehicle to enable third-party access to the boot of their car, Audi said. The carmaker declined to say how many customers would participate in the pilot.
Before the service could be adopted more widely, this keyless trunk access would need to be retrofitted or ordered as an option when purchasing a new car. The participants in the pilot scheme have already been selected; it is not possible to “volunteer”.