by Chris Chilton
- A German company is preparing to shake up Europe’s car rental market.
- Vay will deliver cars using drivers controlling them from an office miles away.
- Fully driverless cars like Waymo’s in the US are still not legal in Europe.
Millions of people rent cars each year, but if you don’t live near a city center or airport, getting access to one can be a pain, and having one delivered to your door, expensive. Now a German company thinks it can smooth out the whole rental process by using remote drivers to send rental cars to your location and pick them up again when you’re done.
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The company is Vay, the name a humorous nod to how Germans pronounce the word way, and it plans to launch its remote-rental service in Berlin following a recent change in the country’s laws. Although fully driverless cabs like the ones operated by Waymo in the US are still not legal in Europe, the German parliament this summer granted permission for remotely-driven vehicles to operate in approved areas by properly trained humans starting this December.
A Different Kind of Test Drive
Founder Thomas von der Oh has been testing his technology using specially adapted Kia Niros in Las Vegas, where driverless taxis are allowed, The Guardian reports. He thinks Vay could transform the rental market in such a way that drivers use rentals rather than buy a second car. Maybe even a first.
The rental cars themselves look mostly like regular last-generation Kia e-Niros, bar some small additional monitoring equipment on the front and rear of the roof, and on the sides. The interiors also appear virtually stock, meaning there’s no complicated acclimation process for the renter once they get behind the wheel.
The job of delivering the car to the renter is handled by a driver sitting in an office in what looks like a gaming rig, facing the kind of triple-screen display many sim-racers uses. Multiple other rigs controlling other cars are close by, each equipped with a big red button to the left of the wheel that can shut the car off and bring it to a halt quickly if there’s a problem. As soon as the driver has finished dropping one car off, they ‘teleport’ into a new car and get on with moving that one.
Who Gets the Job?
Drivers have to complete hundreds of test miles before they’re qualified, and though some gaming experience could be an advantage, it’s not essential. Besides, the cars appear to be limited to 25 mph (40 km/h) according to info on Vay’s website, so it’s hardly a job for Gran Turismo fans.
But it could be a great job for existing IRL cabbies who’ve endured violence while carrying out their job, disgruntled Uber employees or truck drivers who want to spend less time away from their families.
“People see this as a job of the future. They get bathroom breaks and lunch breaks, they get to work in a team rather than on their own,” von der Ohe told The Guardian.
Vay says its Las Vegas fleet will expand to 100 vehicles before the end of 2025, and it has already launched a service at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges in Belgium as it prepares to hit real public roads in Germany next year.