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Comment by mayniac | Hacker News Reader

I don't really see the point of this. Assuming you have equal or less cars per (adult) person in your househould, what advantage does this have exactly? Your car is likely going to be wherever you are. If it's going to be at work then just deliver it to your office. If it's at home then just deliver it normally.

Best use case is if you've gone for a walk or have more cars than people and then what, your car in your driveway becomes a glorified 5 figure oversized mailbox?

Call me paranoid, but I feel like the real reason is this:

>On the day of delivery, customers can check if their car is parked in-range of the delivery location in the Amazon Key app.

That implies to me they'll have access to your cars location, which is information they can use for targeted ads.

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That probably depends on the kind of job you have. If you're a developer, sure, you can probably accept a package at the office, but if you're working as a cashier in a supermarket, it's doubtful your employer would allow you to accept packages while working.

I personally mail every package to my work rather than home. No worry of leaving the house for one 15 minute window in the entire day and ups showing up and taking my package back with them. ($1800 laptop so taking it back was better than the porch but it was still annoying.)

That said I am the IT/Electronics tech for a small machine shop. Most of us here have items we order come to work.

This is my favorite perk of working at a company. The only thing that sort of sucks is when you buy some items for personal use, some for the business, and some for personal-use-at-office, all from the same vendors, and need to disintermingle them. If you're out of town, telling a coworker to go into the Provantage box to grab the network tester you ordered, and having him open the box containing soap, is weird.

Yeah, definitely this. Depending on security as well, dropping something off at the car is fine, but getting inside the building would not work at a lot of places.

If it's going to be at work then just deliver it to your office.

My office has a procedure where all incoming packages are held and checked for the loading papers and then matched to outstanding purchase orders. If there is no paper on the outside, the box is opened to find one.

While I'm not a fan of the car idea, my office isn't exactly compatible with receiving personal packages so I can see an avenue for something like this.

A non-insignificant number of people have a car but commute some other way, using it only on afternoons and weekends. Others only use it for part of the commute (e.g. until the parking lot of some trans/metro station).

Yep, I bike in in the summer months and would consider this. I would never consider Amazon Key for my home. Way too personal and I'd have to integrate or remove my security system.

I have a car, but don't use it for commuting. It is slower and more expensive than public transit. During the day it's parked at home.

> That implies to me they'll have access to your cars location, which is information they can use for targeted ads.

I think you greatly overestimate how useful this is for targeted ads. And keep in mind that Amazon isn't really generating revenue from ads. They sell stuff and AWS.

My office won't accept any delivery over 5kg or of a certain size - I know many people who had their orders from Amazon refused and then the nearest courier depot is 45 minut drive away which is a massive pain. If they could just leave the box in my car that would make it much simpler.

In my hometown suburb there is almost always an extra car in the driveway while the parents are away. Where I live now, many students lesve there cars at home and walk to class. (car is for work). So it may have some applications in non-big city environments

This could work well for grocery delivery, using reusable passive cooling, and reusable containers, as part of solving the returns problem in general, which is key for fashion retail.

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