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Amazon wants to get into your car. Last year, the e-commerce giant launched a new service allowing customers to have parcels delivered to the trunks of their vehicles. To begin with, only General Motors and Volvo vehicles were eligible. Today, this service has been extended to 2017 models and newer Ford and Lincoln vehicles.
There are some caveats: the service is limited to 50 US cities and vehicles must be equipped with a modem to connect to Ford's connected car cloud services, FordPass Connect and Lincoln Connect. Only Amazon Prime subscribers are eligible. Packages weighing more than 50 kg, measuring more than 26 x 21 x 16 inches, requiring a signature, of a value greater than 1 300 USD or from a third party seller are also not eligible for the delivery by car.
"I think this is a great opportunity for Ford to offer its customers an extra service and added value on [they] have a connected vehicle, "said Lorin Kennedy, product marketing manager at Ford.
To set up the service, you need to register with Amazon Key and FordPass or Lincoln Way, allow car deliveries, and log in accounts. You will also need to add your Ford car to your Amazon Key app and include a description of the vehicle so that Amazon's email services can locate it. The car will need to be parked within a certain radius of an address used for Amazon deliveries, so at home or at work. Driveways, parking lots, garages and street parking are eligible sites, provided they are not at any address in the city.
After selecting the delivery by car, Amazon sends a series of notifications to inform you that the package is en route. At any time, you can choose to change your delivery location or "block access" to the car in the Key app, for example if you have to run a fast race or if your car is not immediately accessible to the deliveryman. Amazon will then default to your backup delivery location if access to the vehicle is blocked. To find your car, Amazon smugglers will have access to its GPS location, its license plate number and an image of the car.
Amazon is becoming more and more interested in the car experience as it seeks to develop its voice assistants and broadcast services. The company has managed to convince some major automakers – Toyota, BMW, Ford and, more recently, Audi – to allow Alexa's direct integration into their infotainment systems. But not all manufacturers will accept Amazon's integration requirements. For drivers of these vehicles, Amazon offers a secondary market device called Echo Auto. The gadget of the size of a credit card is on your dashboard and brings the Alexa features to your car via an auxiliary jack or via the existing Bluetooth configuration of a smartphone. Amazon recently reported receiving more than one million pre-orders for the device.
Ford is also using Amazon news to tout its other connected car services. The automaker has recently started working with on-demand car wash services such as Spiffy, Rub a Dub and Sparkl.
Letting others track the location of your car will seem overwhelming or unnecessary for some customers. Others may be concerned about the risks of intimacy or theft. Kennedy stated that it was incumbent on the vehicle owner to determine the degree of access that he wished to grant to these companies.
"We are asking customers to agree to allow Amazon to lock and unlock their vehicle so they know exactly what information [they’re giving] and what Amazon does with this information, "she said.
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