Volvo gives green light for 'shopping delivery to your car' service

After a successful pilot of Roam Delivery, car giant is in talks with a Swedish start-up that can keep fresh groceries cool for 24 hours

In the past few years technology firms and automotive companies have been teaming up to create a "connected car revolution", for the benefit of both drivers and car makers.

At Swedish manufacturer Volvo, director of business development and strategy Jonas Ronnkvist has several "smart car" ideas up his sleeve, including an app that allows goods and groceries to be delivered to cars.

The firm started piloting the service, dubbed Roam Delivery, in February 2014, and is currently in discussions with various supermarkets and logistics companies.

"We need to do some engineering to make it available in all [Volvo] cars, so the journey continues," Ronnkvist says.

Central to the service is a system that allows a delivery company to unlock a consumer's car with their approval.

"We have control over our key infrastructure globally so we can reprogramme the keys... so 50 keys can all work with one car, and we can decide for [every] minute which key is working with the car," he says.

Ronnkvist says trials of the service received an enthusiastic response from Volvo drivers.

"We have clearly proven that both the delivery companies can see the benefits and also that the customer is happy that instead of needing to be home, something can be delivered to the car," he says.

But what if you want fresh products delivered that are meant to kept in a fridge or freezer?

"There are opportunities to solve that [issue] to keep cold stuff in the car," says Ronnkvist.

"We are working with one of the hottest tech start-ups in Sweden, who provide a food bag that keeps the food cold for 24 hours," he says.

Volvo is working with several technology companies to manage and analyse the huge amount of data it collects. One of its key tech partners is Teradata, which is helping Volvo to track and analyse data passing through Volvo's complex back-end infrastructure, which Ronnkvist says includes everything from 40-year-old mainframe apps to modern Java apps and Microsoft software.

"We had to redefine what [we wanted to do] with the master data - where do we create the data, how do we keep track of the data, and we decided to use Teradata - partly because Ford, who owned us at the time, were a big Teradata customer but also because it fit our own thoughts on how we'd like to see information presented in the future," Ronnkvist says.

Volvo looked at alternative solutions but Ronnkvist said Teradata's integrated data model stood out. It also uses many of Teradata's partners' technologies, such as SAS for analytics.

Among the "connected car" technologies that feed data into Volvo's systems are a solution that provides emergency breakdown calls and remote control of the car, and another that provides in-car entertainment. All these services run on a cloud platform provided by Ericsson.

"Our thinking was that one clear positive effect of [using Ericsson] is that they have experience of managing operating networks with millions or billions of customers, and so they can support us in the future when it comes to us having millions of cars connected to the system globally - this is something we can't handle ourselves as an IT function," Ronnkvist says.

The firm wanted a "non-stop operational service", according to Ronnkvist, which is why it went for a cloud platform.

Volvo's smart car apps are augmented by telematics technology from a company called Wireless Car, which allows users to control functions of their car remotely.

"[Telematics] is part of our legacy. If you have a Volvo you can download an app that gives you information on whether your doors and windows are closed, whether the door is locked, what your mileage is, how much fuel you have left in the car, and you can also see where your car is parked if you aren't there at the moment," he says.

Other options available to users of the mobile app include setting a timer for the heater to go on, so that in the winter months, drivers can step into a warm car. On the flip side, on hotter days, users can start the engine remotely and cool down the car with air conditioning. This service is available in 21 countries, including the UK, US, China, Germany and Sweden.

But while all of these functions and technologies are changing the way drivers use their vehicles, what is the main aim of collecting all of this data?

"Every automotive manufacturer calls themselves an OEM; we design the car, produce the car and then we sell to a dealer, and then we are finished," Ronnkvist says.

He adds that the dealer has the customer interaction and any complaints are fed back to the manufacturers' second or third line.

But with the idea of the connected car, manufacturers can keep their engagement with the customer going.

Some manufacturers, for example, will notify drivers where their nearest manufacturer-garage is when they need something repaired.

But Ronnkvist insists that Volvo has no intention of cutting out car dealerships.

"The dealer will continue to speak to the customer and make the financial transaction. We can't [cut out the dealer] like Tesla, who are new to the market and are taking that approach in a number of states because they don't need a dealer structure in the digital economy.

"We need our 2,800 workshops and dealers in order for us to sell the volume of cars that we are and also in order to provide after-sale customer support - we can't afford to cut them out," he says.