A new approach to driverless mobility

German mobility startup Vay said on Tuesday it had raised $95 million from investors such as Kinnevik, Coatue and Eurazeo, as it planned to launch its first car-rental service in Hamburg next year. A customer could use a mobile app to book an electric car that would be delivered to the pick-up location by a driver steering the vehicle remotely. The customer could then drive it like a normal car and the remote operator moves to steering a different car.

Mit ferngesteuerten Autos, die sich durch den Stadtverkehr bewegen, will das Berliner Start-up Vay eine völlig neue Art des Taxis erfinden. Dafür hat das Unternehmen neue Investoren gefunden und eine zweite große Finanzierungsrunde über 84 Millionen Euro abgeschlossen. Das Gesamtinvestment in die Firma beläuft sich nun auf 128 Millionen Euro. Vay ist damit das bestfinanzierte Unternehmen Europas im Segment des autonomen Fahrens.

Vay might be able to skip for now some of the expensive, and technical heavy lifting, of using Lidar lasers, radar and cameras to teach an algorithm to drive but relying on a remote driver presents major challenges of its own. The startup’s vehicles are designed to pullover automatically if they lose connection with the control room but the issue of lag delaying reaction times in a busy city centre has plagued other self-driving startups.

Vay, a company that is trying to get self-driving car services to market faster by pursuing a teledriven approach, has raised a $95 million Series B round to help it launch its first commercial service in Hamburg, Germany sometime in 2022. The startup plans to offer a transportation service where a user can order a car to be delivered to their door, drive the car themselves to their destination and then just hop out, leaving the job of parking it to the remote operator.