If there’s one upside of this whole pandemic mess, it’s likely that there’s probably some intense germaphobes working for all these automakers that have long dreamed of plans like this, but never really felt they had a chance. Well, germaphobes, you win. Now we live in a world where a major carmaker is seriously planning on handing you your new car’s keys by flying them to you via a drone.
The company is China’s Geely, owners of Volvo and makers of that Coronovirus-ready SUV we wrote about a while back. Geely launched a “proprietary online sales system” back in February, and since that time has already sold about 10,000 vehicles via the system.
The system originally had buyers go to dealers to pick up their cars, but the revised system will deliver very-disinfected cars to people’s homes, and then give them the keys via drone, as this video shows:
What’s not clear is if this has actually been done in the real world yet; I’m a little skeptical, because their last-inch delivery solution seems a little flawed.
Once you get to this step:
…how, exactly, are you supposed to get your keys out of the bag without pulling that drone down into your face? Is there some kind of quick release thing we can’t really see from here? Can’t the drones have a little remote-actuated gripper that can let go and drop the keys into the customer’s hand, or something?
I’m sure they’ll figure all this out, and Chinese-market customers can dart into their new Geely Icons and drive them places they really shouldn’t even be going to, and then not get out of the car at all, anyway.
Sounds great. Sign me up.
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