DUBAI 24 July 2019: Noon, the Middle East’s homegrown digital marketplace, has partnered with Chinese technology company Neolix to trial driverless delivery vehicles in UAE.
Mohamed Alabbar, noon.com’s founder signed a memorandum of understand (MoU) with Neolix Huitong (Beijing) Technology Co. to introduce autonomous delivery vehicles into the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Autonomous technology has been transforming the way that companies deliver goods and services to consumers overseas. Now, with noon.com and Neoflix, the same technology will be available 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. The driverless vans are being especially customized to suit the region’s weather conditions, and are being seamlessly integrated with noon’s logistics platform.
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.
The Neolix project incubation started in 2015 and since then has developed and industrialized 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 vehicles are already in operation in various tourist attractions, campuses, and logistics parks across China.
“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.
Primarily a digital e-commerce platform utilizing homegrown technology capabilities, noon has rapidly built deep native capabilities in its marketplace, fulfillment, logistics and payments platforms. noon promises to bring customers in the region more choice, affordability and convenience across a wide range of products including electronics, fashion, beauty, baby, home and kitchen, as well as free, fast delivery and free returns.
