Chinese Retail Giant Alibaba To Build Electric Car Vending Machine

The electric car industry is expected to explode in the coming years and it seems Alibaba wants to be at the forefront when it does. The Chinese retail giant just announced that it formed a partnership with Ford to build a gigantic vending machine for selling electric cars. Actually checking out and buying the cars could involve some fairly advanced steps, as well.

For some context, this isn’t the first time that a company dabbled in the concept of a giant vending machine for viewing and purchasing cars. As a matter of fact, there was a sports car vending machine in Singapore that made headlines earlier this year. Then again, it isn’t as if the concept has gotten mainstream and this announcement by Alibaba is expected to gain a lot of traction.

As to how it will actually work, the cars will be placed in a structure that looks like a regular apartment building, but the vehicles are stored in a vertical platform. Anyone who wants to check out the vehicles can use Alibaba’s Taobao app to scan the vehicle they want to take out and choose a color.

Once that’s done, the customers need to snap a selfie, which will be presented to a facial recognition software. After confirmation, the customers can then take the vehicle for a test drive, TechCrunch reports. The customers can only keep the vehicle for three days, however, at which point they either buy the vehicle or arrange to test a different model.

If it sounds like Alibaba is taking some huge risks, there are safety protocols in place. The customers who are allowed to take the vehicles out for a drive are those who qualified as an Alibaba Super Member. This is decided based on the credit score that the customer has achieved with the company.

Beyond that, each customer is only allowed to do a test drive five times within a two-month period, Futurism reports. This is to ensure that customers don’t abuse the service.