Middle East’s home-grown digital marketplace, noon.com has partnered with Chinese technology company Neolix to trial driverless delivery vehicles designed to make last-mile delivery even smoother.
Pushing the boundaries of technology in the region is core to noon.com’s values. This partnership with Neolix, a Beijing-based technology company specialising in the R&D and the production of autonomous vehicles, is the next step in delivery innovation.
Mohamed Alabbar, noon.com’s founder signed a memorandum of understand (MoU) with Neolix Huitong (Beijing) Technology co., LTD, to introduce autonomous delivery vehicles into the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
“Introducing new technology to the region that will improve the e-commerce experience for customers is something we’re incredibly excited about. noon is very proud to bring driverless delivery vans to streets in our cities. We look forward to bringing many such innovations over the next few months. We are a hungry, talented and ambitious nation. I hope it will inspire our tech-driven youth to dream big and to achieve those dreams because everything is possible here,” said Alabbar.
Autonomous technology has been transforming the way that companies deliver goods and services to consumers overseas. Now, with the help of noon.com and Neoflix, the same technology will be available here in the region. Over the next few weeks, noon.com will trial autonomous vehicles to complete its last-mile delivery in key areas of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The driverless vehicles will be built by Neoflix who have deep knowledge and experience with the productisation of autonomous technology. The driverless vans are being especially customised to suit the region’s weather conditions, and are being seamlessly integrated with noon’s logistics platform.
Having already created a hyper-efficient home-grown logistics and supply chain setup in KSA, the UAE and Egypt, noon.com is now looking to make the last mile of deliveries even smoother to give customers in the region a higher quality experience. As well as being reliable and speedy, driverless vehicle technology can remove up to 90% of the cost associated with the last mile of delivery. This partnership between Neolix and noon furthers the latter’s commitment to bring the best technology and solutions to serve our region’s ecommerce customers.
The Neolix project incubation started in 2015 and since then has developed and industrialised the production of autonomous vehicles targeting commercial applications, delivering 150 L4 autonomous driving vehicles. Currently, Neolix has 4 types of products: Retail, Express, Freight and Patrol. Neolix’s mission is to reconstruct the infrastructure for future city logistics, a mission that is in line with noon.com’s tech-driven vision. With more than 10 years of experience in smart logistics, the Neolix team embraces the pioneering spirit to turn prototypes into usable products. Neolix vehicles are already in operation in various tourist attractions, campuses and logistics parks across China.