“Alexa, call me an Uber. No wait, scratch that—buy me a car.”
If you’ve succumbed to a life made simpler by Amazon—whether it’s a Prime membership that you use to ship everything you buy as fast as possible, or to watch all your TV shows, or you’ve bought a wall of buttons to order whatever you need—Amazon’s latest offering might be for you. Assuming you still go outside, that is.
Amazon will start selling cars on its Italian website, Reuters reported Nov. 18. The company has secured a partnership with Fiat Chrysler to sell some of its models online. Initially, Italian Amazon customers will be able to purchase three of Fiat Chrysler’s smaller vehicles, the Fiat 500, 500L, and the Panda. Customers can click on the model they want, with the packages they’d like included, and after the purchase is complete, an Amazon representative will be in touch about picking the car up when it’s ready. Reuters said it should take about two weeks to fulfill an order, so quite a bit slower than Amazon Prime.
“The time has arrived to give consumers a new, more efficient and transparent way to choose a new vehicle,” Gianluca Italia, Fiat Chrysler’s Italian representative, said during an online press conference, according to Reuters.
Amazon wasn’t immediately available to confirm whether the service would eventually be extended beyond Italy, or the three models available. Amazon has had a portal on its website for years where users can research all sorts of makes and models of cars, but this is the first time that a customer would be able to buy a car from a manufacturer the same way that they could buy detergent, books, or a box of live ladybugs.
Perhaps in the near future, you’ll be able to fire up Alexa and ask it to reserve you a new Chrysler Pacifica, or get an Amazon Dash button you can press every time you need a new car. It’s a brave new world.