“Hello, I will be your driver for today,” says Bartek Szurgot, a software engineer at German startup Vay and my chauffeur for this ride. He disengages the handbrake, gently presses the accelerator and the new Kia Niro EV I’m sitting in slowly pulls out of the parking lot.
As we approach the first intersection, Bartek indicates, turns the steering wheel, makes his observations, and drives out onto a busy road near the centre of Berlin. So far, pretty standard — except for one big difference.
Bartek isn’t in the car. He’s in an office a few blocks away, controlling the vehicle like a high-tech puppeteer.
Remote operators like Bartek command Vay’s cars from a video game-style station equipped with a driver’s seat, steering wheel, pedals, and three monitors providing visibility in front of the car and to its side.
Road traffic sounds, such as emergency vehicle sirens and other warning signals, are transmitted via microphones to the teledriver’s headphones. Operators could be sitting on the other side of the world.
Vay has developed a proprietary hardware and software system called “drive-by-wire” that communicates with the car’s key controls, including the steering wheel, brake, and gear shifter. Electrical signals transmitted from the remote operating station tell the system what to do, enabling the car to mirror the remote driver’s actions in real time.
Redundant mobile networks transmit the data. In the event of a network failure or emergency, the vehicle automatically comes to a safe stop.
Vay’s remote drivers spend most of their time delivering vehicles to customers, who hail the cars on an app. After the car arrives, users take the wheel and drive themselves.
Customers can use the car for a short trip, hours, days, or even longer. Once they’re done, they stop the car safely in the road, apply the handbrake, get out, and carry on with their day. Then, a remote operator takes over again and drives on to the next client.
As anyone familiar with autonomous vehicles will know, watching a car drive itself takes some getting used to. Knowing that my “driver” was blocks away, steering through screens and sensors, made every turn feel surreal. But once you get used to it, the ride is almost disappointingly normal — I suppose that’s the point.
Vay’s tech is impressive, no doubt, but in Europe, regulators may strangle its potential before it ever scales. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Vay is accelerating.
Vay already has a 40-strong fleet of remote-controlled cars in Las Vegas. In Berlin and across Europe, though, progress has been slower, with no commercial service in place yet.
Due to regulatory red tape, Vay is limited to test drives only and is required to keep a safety driver onboard. It has previously received an exemption, though. In 2023, it used one such regulatory hall pass to become the first company to operate a car on a European public road without a person inside.
However, the German government hands out such permits sparingly. That’s why I couldn’t take the wheel on our test drive. That was Graeme’s job, our safety driver for the trip. Nevertheless, it gave me a firm idea of what to expect.
The future of car sharing?
When I first heard of Vay’s remote driving concept a couple of years back, I was skeptical. The company touted the benefits: less hassle, cheaper fares, better working conditions for workers. But it seemed like a business model at risk of fading into irrelevancy once self-driving cars went mainstream.
But with my mind fixated on the paradigms of ride-hailing on one hand and full autonomy on the other, I may have overlooked that Vay was doing something radically different.
“We’re creating a whole new category of mobility,” Thomas von der Ohe, Vay’s CEO and co-founder, tells me from the company’s headquarters in Berlin. After spending years in the Bay area building self-driving cars, he came back to Europe, founding Vay in 2018 alongside Fabrizio Scelsi and Bogdan Djukic.
Vay’s rides in Las Vegas cost about half as much as Uber. Von der Ohe says they keep prices low by reducing driver labour costs. With ride-hailing services, it’s one driver, one car. But a single Vay driver can oversee up to 10 vehicles on any given day. When they drop one car at a customer, the drivers can “teleport” and gain control of another vehicle.
Vay could offer a taxi-style service where passengers ride in the back, but that would cut into profits and drive up prices. That’s why letting customers drive themselves makes business sense, says Von der Ohe.
Vay aims to make its biggest impact in car sharing and rentals, not ride-hailing. Von der Ohe says the company can match average car rental prices in Germany while helping rental firms cut costs by reducing the need for large parking facilities, especially at busy airports.
Vay also hopes to provide a better version of car sharing. Customers don’t need to pick up or park their cars — major hassles in dense European cities. Fleet owners can keep vehicles in use longer, and Von der Ohe believes the model could even reduce private car ownership in urban areas.
All this makes for a compelling value proposition. Vay has raised $150mn in funding so far, including €34mn ($37mn) from the European Investment Bank.
But there are still many potholes in the road. Outside Las Vegas, Vay is still unproven — and regulatory red tape isn’t making things easier.
In Europe, governments have been slow to adopt rules for remotely driven cars. Currently, the vehicles are subject to much the same guidelines as autonomous vehicles — which are patchy at best.
“We have the tech, it works, it could be all over Berlin and Europe,” says Von der Ohe. “But politics get in the way, there’s no consensus. It’s just so weird.”
Vay has completed over 10,000 trips in Vegas and plans to scale its fleet of remote-controlled Kia Niros to 100 this year. The company recently secured a new production facility in Sin City where it will retrofit the cars with its drive-by-wire system and a relatively inexpensive set of cameras. To fund the expansion, the company is also lining up another funding round, says Von der Ohe.
After my test drive, I called an Uber to take me to Berlin Brandenburg Airport. As it rolled up, I couldn’t help but wish it arrived empty — just waiting for me to jump in and take the wheel. Maybe one day. But for now, if I want that future, I’ll have to book a ticket to Vegas.
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