A trunk full of new ideas. The Volkswagen brand is building a big digital user platform. The We Deliver service is one element. We meet one of the testers. Text: Joachim Hentschel | Photos: Georg Roske I 38 t was worth it after all. Gufeng Zhou is pleased he braved the parking chaos in Berlin today. Just as well he left home a little earlier than usual this morning to find a good parking space for his Polo before starting work – his office is on the border between the Mitte and Friedrichshain districts, an area where parking spaces are in very short supply. The e-commerce firm that Gufeng works for has its headquarters there. And the email he has been expecting arrives at 11.45 a.m.: the parcel has been delivered. “Yes! That will be the lamp.” Gufeng Zhou spotted the designer item from Sweden on Instagram at the end of last week and ordered it from an online retailer. Now, at last, it is waiting for him in the trunk of the Polo. The courier from the DHL Parcel service personally put it there, opening the trunk with the parcel scanner – and the help of a single-use access code that was issued by Volkswagen once Gufeng had notified the online retailer that the parcel should be delivered to the trunk of the car. Where is this service from Volkswagen available? In spring 2018, the answer is nowhere – yet. However, the planned service, called We Deliver, has already passed the intensive practical test with flying colors. Naturally, not everything is running smoothly yet. But the team at Volkswagen We, the brand’s digital mobility initiative, can work on the fine tuning using feedback from the 300 testers. A cosmos of services and options Gufeng Zhou, 33, is one of the people who have trialed We Deliver for four weeks – he was given a Polo to use for the test period. The service is one element in the Volkswagen We digital ecosystem, which will also include many other features. Going forward, Volkswagen AG will be organizing many of its mobility services in similar platforms. As digital ecosystems. As a cosmos of services, preference settings, sharing options, and much more. To make a long story short, we will soon be logging into an account with the Volkswagen Group brands, just like we do now with Google or an Apple ID. The crucial factor will be designing these platforms to be as practical, intuitive, userfriendly, and connectable as possible. According to a forecast from the consulting firm McKinsey, global revenues from digital mobility services
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