Car vending machines for China

China is already home to kooky vending machines -- most notably machines that dispense live crabs with ginger tea -- and soon you’ll be able to buy a car from a vending machine.

That’s right; next year the world’s largest retail commerce company Alibaba Group will offer users of its ‘Tmall’ shopping platform the ability to buy cars on their smartphones and then collect from a vertical tower.

This concept is not entirely bonkers given used car seller Autobahn Motors opened a futuristic 15-storey luxury car showroom in Singapore last year. And US company Carvana also employs vending machine-like towers to sell used cars.

To make a purchase using the Alibaba vending machine, a user with a credit score of more than 750 on Alibaba's consumer credit-scoring system Sesame Credit will be able to go to a vending machine location, select a model on his or her smartphone, pay a 10 per cent initial fee and drive away with the new car.

The customer needs to then make a monthly payment until full payment is complete.

According to Yu Wei, general manager of the automotive division of Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, the era of online car shopping has arrived and the new automotive retail model “will make buying cars as easy as buying a can of Coke”.

China has enjoyed the status of largest auto market for the past 10 years with car sales totalling 28 million in 2016 and is projected to become the top market for luxury vehicles by 2020.

Luxury vehicle brands are rapidly expanding online in China and Alibaba’s platform will no doubt reduce their reliance on traditional car dealerships.

In the event you receive a dead crab from a Chinese vending machine, some companies will compensate you with three live crabs.

However, Alibaba has not yet revealed the potential compensation on offer if a car gets damaged or, worse still, stuck in its vending machine.