Chinese carmaker Geely has announced that the brand will be shipping the car keys for its cars via a drone delivery system. To minimise personal contact the brand has been selling cars online and delivering the keys to it at the customers’ doorstep via a drone delivery system. The drone delivery system has been employed in view of the recent outbreak of the Corona Virus Disease.
Geely has been taking its customers and its staff’s safety seriously as the COVID-19 disease has the potential to rapidly spread infection. Recently the brand also launched the Icon SUV equipped with an N95-rated air filtration system which claims to filter out bacteria and also has capabilities to filter-out droplet-based viruses, restricting their entry into the vehicle’s cabin. The Intelligent Air Purification System (IAPS) that claims to isolate and eliminate over 99.7% of dust and harmful particulates employee a four-layer filtrate that is rated to catch around 95% of particulates sized over 0.3 microns.
When a customer makes an online purchase, the local dealer disinfects the car and drops it at the customer’s home. A trained drone pilot will then drop-off the keys to the customer which are again disinfected by the dealer before it is set out for delivery. The key can be delivered at the customer’s doorstep or the balcony. As of now, the online store has already delivered around 10,000 vehicles. Geely which is the parent company for Volvo and Lotus is also likely to follow suit and start the contactless booking and delivery systems.
In India, Chinese owned car brand MG Motors has started to take similar steps and the brand now delivers cars at the customer’s doorstep by completely swabbing the interiors and frequently touched surfaces on the outside such as door handles with disinfectants and covering the frequently touched surfaces such as the steering wheel, the gear selector knob, seats etc with plastic covering, removing them in presence of the customer. MG Motors has also fully digitized the booking and delivery system on the brand’s MG Hector SUV and the MG ZS EV to minimise personal contact.
Other Indian brands are also likely to start disinfecting their cars before delivery and use online methods for contactless booking and delivery.