A trunk full of new ideas.

It 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.

Tomorrow’s ideal customer

The big players in Silicon Valley, too, are using this trend to set themselves apart from the rest. At the end of the day, it is not necessarily the biggest that wins, but the player that can provide the best customer experience. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, once said, “If you only take your lead from your competitors, then you are condemned to playing the waiting game. On the other hand, if you focus 100 percent on customers you can always be the pioneer.” What Volkswagen We is currently developing is already shaping up to be a visionary and eminently practical solution.

“I’m very willing to download apps if I think a digital trend is a good idea,” Gufeng Zhou says. “But I don’t go along with every marketing gag.” Gufeng, who was born in China, came to Germany in his early twenties, and has been living in Berlin since 2009. Today, he works as a data analytics manager in e-commerce.

He has always been an early adopter. He built his first computer as a 13-year-old student in China. Today, Gufeng makes use of all the mobile services he considers meaningful – from digital wallets to education apps. He doesn’t own a car, but uses car sharing up to three times a week. He has an account with sharing services for e-scooters and bikes, and is a real virtuoso when it comes to combining public transport, cars and two-wheelers. If you were to paint a picture of the ideal customer based on everything that has been written about urban mobility – Gufeng Zhou would be the perfect fit.

Meanwhile, it is afternoon in Berlin. Gufeng has quickly changed into his sports outfit at the office. Before he drives home, he wants to go for a jog along the bank of the River Spree. There are plenty of public parking options near Moltkebrücke. “That’s good for me in two ways, because it also means that the courier is able to deliver the parcel,” he says as he steers the Polo through the city.

The reason for that is because he is going to a birthday party at the weekend with his girlfriend Dijana. The birthday present is a special pair of sneakers. And Gufeng has arranged for them to be delivered to the trunk of the car – to the parking space near the Spree where the Polo can be found most afternoons. The trunk delivery service specifies a 300-meter radius for the car’s location to make sure the courier can deliver the parcel. “For me, this is the typical use case,” Gufeng says before he puts his headphones on. “I can go for a jog instead of queuing up at the post office.”

One piece in the We universe

There are plenty of situations in which this kind of delivery service can help solve problems. And it is important to remember that car trunk delivery is only one of many pieces in the jigsaw that makes up the Volkswagen We universe. We Park pays for your parking ticket by app, VW Connect sends easy-to-read vehicle data to your smartphone, the Car-Net services provide real-time information and navigation – the list goes on.

We Deliver is symptomatic of the vision for a Group-wide ecosystem for two reasons. First, it features one variety of what is known as the digital key. If the parcel courier can be authorized to open the trunk – then a friend or partner could also be sent the authorization to use the car without the added complication of handing over the key. People who do not own a car themselves could also be issued with a Volkswagen user ID. That opens up entirely new answers to the question: How does the industry define its customers?

Second, We Deliver demonstrates how cooperation can function. Six online retailers who use DHL as their carrier are participating in the field trials – that, too, is an important step toward the best user experience. However tough competition on digital markets may be, no online customer is willing to accept product boundaries that are too rigid. The brands must be aware of who they are and what they are, but they also need to stay compatible with the outside world.

We Deliver passed the demanding beta test on this particular afternoon. The message that the courier had found the car and delivered the sneakers came while Gufeng was still jogging. “No matter how many times it works, it’s still exciting,” Gufeng says when he shows Dijana the parcel once he has arrived back home. “Flexibility is the most important thing for us. It’s how we can optimize our daily lives. That’s what makes digitalization so valuable.”

Reliable and close to people – that was part of Volkswagen’s DNA in the analog age, and will likely be the best possible motto in the digital ecosystem of the future, too.