Tag: last-mile logistics

Robomart

A mobile grocery store pulls up outside your door. You unlock it with a code, step up to the vehicle, pick what you want from everyday items and meal kits, and you are done. This spring, Robomart, a California-based company, teams up with grocery chain Stop & Shop to trial what it positions as a driverless grocery store service in Boston, Massachusetts.

What Robomart is solving in grocery

Only a tiny fraction of the $1 trillion grocery market moves online. Two reasons dominate. On-demand delivery is prohibitively expensive for retailers. And for many shoppers, it matters to pick their own food.

How the Robomart experience works

The flow is designed to feel like the convenience of the old door-to-door model, updated with autonomous tech.

  1. You summon the mobile store using a mobile app.
  2. When it arrives outside your door, you tap in a code to unlock the doors.
  3. You grab what you want from the on-board selection of everyday items and meal kits.

The bigger pattern. Autonomy makes “door-to-door” scalable

For decades, consumers have the convenience of a local greengrocer, milkman, or ice-cream vendor coming door to door. It rarely makes economic sense to scale. The claim here is that driverless technology changes the cost equation enough to make the model viable at scale.

A second proof point. Nuro and Kroger’s autonomous lockers

A similar model shows up in summer 2018, when Nuro teams up with supermarket giant Kroger for autonomous grocery delivery in Scottsdale, Arizona. The mechanics differ. It is not a roaming mini-store. It is pre-picked orders loaded into secure lockers. But the handoff is the same. A code unlocks your groceries.

  • Customers place an order with Kroger via a smartphone app.
  • Staff load the autonomous pod’s secure lockers with the customer order at the depot.
  • When the “R1” autonomous delivery pod arrives, the customer taps in a code to open the locker and access their groceries.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Robomart, in this post?
A driverless grocery store service you summon via app, then unlock with a code to pick items directly from the vehicle.

Where does the Stop & Shop trial take place?
Boston, Massachusetts.

Why has grocery been slow to move online?
On-demand delivery is expensive for retailers, and consumers often prefer to pick their own food.

What is the comparable example mentioned?
Nuro and Kroger’s autonomous grocery delivery service in Scottsdale, Arizona, using an “R1” pod with secure lockers opened by code.

Volvo In-Car Delivery

It is late November. You order groceries and Christmas gifts online. You park your Volvo somewhere in Gothenburg. While you are still at work, a courier finds your car, unlocks it once, drops the package into the boot, locks it again, and leaves. You receive a notification. When you drive home, your shopping is already waiting in your car.

That is the core idea behind Volvo’s in-car delivery service. It is available to customers who subscribe to Volvo On Call and live in Gothenburg, Sweden. For the Christmas period, deliveries come from two online retailers. Lekmer.com and Mat.se. PostNord handles the delivery. The courier uses a special one-time access digital key to open the car, place the package in the boot, and re-secure the vehicle.

Why “deliver to the car” is a bigger move than it sounds

At first glance, in-car delivery reads like convenience marketing. Skip missed deliveries. Avoid the “where is my package” loop. Reduce the need to be at home.

But the real shift is structural. The car becomes a secure delivery endpoint. Not your home address. Not a parcel shop. The vehicle itself.

That matters because it turns connected car capability into a service layer that can be monetized and extended. The value does not end when the car leaves the dealership.

The mechanism that makes it work

This service only becomes credible when the access model is precise. The logic is simple:

  • The courier does not get your physical key.
  • The courier gets a one-time digital key that grants limited access for a single delivery.
  • The car becomes the controlled handover point. The boot is the practical drop zone.

This is not “keyless” as a gadget feature. This is access as a managed entitlement, designed for commerce and logistics.

Why Volvo is telling a marketing story through engineering

Volvo often wins when the innovation is concrete and utility-driven. In-car delivery is exactly that. It is a clean demo of connected technology that saves time, reduces hassle, and fits real family behavior during peak shopping season.

The brand story is also clear:

  • Connected car tech is not an abstract dashboard feature.
  • It changes how everyday logistics works.
  • It makes the car useful even when it is parked.

That is a stronger narrative than “we have an app.” It is a capability that people can visualize immediately.

The strategic signal to other industries

In-car delivery is also a quiet message to adjacent ecosystems:

  • Retailers get a new delivery option that reduces failed deliveries.
  • Logistics players get a new category of secure handover.
  • Carmakers get a template for post-sale services that can scale through partnerships.

In short. Volvo is experimenting with moving beyond simply building and selling cars, by tapping into connected technologies that keep creating value after purchase.

A few fast answers before you act

Q: What is Volvo In-Car Delivery in one sentence?
A service that lets packages be delivered directly into your car using a one-time digital key, instead of delivering to your home.

Q: Who can use it in this pilot?
Customers in Gothenburg, Sweden who subscribe to the Volvo On Call telematics service.

Q: Which retailers and logistics partner are involved?
Online retailers Lekmer.com and Mat.se. Deliveries are handled by PostNord.

Q: What is the key innovation behind the experience?
A one-time access digital key that allows the courier to open the car for a single delivery and place goods in the boot.

Q: Why is this more than a convenience feature?
Because the car becomes a secure delivery endpoint. That turns connected car capability into a service layer and partnership platform.