Vay, the startup that introduced remote car-sharing in Berlin and Las Vegas, is looking to expand into commercial and business-to-business services, boosted by recent deals with French carmaker Peugeot and Belgium-based Poppy.
Vay isn't a traditional ride-hailing or car-sharing startup, nor does it operate a robotaxi service, but customers in Las Vegas or Berlin can simply open the Vay app to hail a car, which will arrive without a human at the wheel.
The Berlin-based startup, which was founded in 2019 and has raised about $110 million to date, has developed remote-driving technology that allows an employee sitting in an office to drive an empty vehicle to a customer. When Vay's vehicle arrives, the customer hops in and manually takes over control. The customer drives themselves to their destination, and the remote driver drives the vehicle back when they're done.
The new B2B division is co-founder and CEO Thomas von der Ohe's bet on what he sees as the future of mobility, he told TechCrunch.
“This is the future we foresee for automotive,” he said. “At the click of a button, vans, trucks and cars will be teledrive-enabled.”
Von der Ohe said remote driving technology is so cheap from a capital investment perspective that he expects that within five to 10 years, every type of vehicle rolling off a production line will be remote-driving capable, leveraging the ADAS cameras already installed in the vehicle.
This is where Vay wants to win deals and market share. The expansion, led by a task force within the company's business development team led by Chief Business Officer Justin Spratt, aims to become something like AWS for vehicle fleets, which means Vay will offer a teledriving platform for automakers, car-sharing and rental companies, trucking, luxury/teleshowfers, and delivery and logistics.
The company has already signed two contracts. Earlier this year, Vay announced a partnership with Peugeot to test its E-308 electric van equipped with teledriving technology. Vay is also exploring use cases in the premium OEM market. The company said this could include teleshowfaring, where vehicle owners could drive themselves to a social event and then teledrive home in comfort.
Vey has also signed a deal with Belgian car-sharing company Poppy to test the teleoperation technology in its fleet, and von der Ohe said other high-profile customers will be announced soon.
Vay teleoperator in Las Vegas. Image courtesy of Kirsten Korosec
From von der Ohe's perspective, Vay is creating a new mobility category designed for customers who want flexibility and don't want the hassle of parking their car. It's a niche group, but von der Ohe argues the startup has some momentum.
Vey launched in Las Vegas earlier this year with two Kia Niro EVs. Since then, the startup has grown its fleet to 15 vehicles and expanded its operating area to about 25% of Las Vegas, including parts of North Las Vegas and Spring Hill. Vey has completed 3,000 trips in Las Vegas since launching in January 2024, growing 20% month-over-month. Von der Ohe said the results have been good and Vey is now investing in a larger fleet, with plans to have 100 vehicles in the next six to nine months.
Price is a key driver of these results: Vay guarantees that autonomous car-sharing rides will cost half the price of rides offered by Uber or Lyft, von der Ohe said. This price guarantee has helped the company attract repeat customers, many of whom are locals and commuters. But the competitive pricing has put pressure on margins.
Von der Ohe said the company could reach profitability by expanding its scale, especially without having thousands of vehicles, and that it could tweak its pricing to get to profitability sooner, but said it has no plans to do so at the moment.
“We want to maintain our claim of being 50 percent cheaper than ride-hailing, but we don't need to do that if we decide to make everything about profitability,” he said. “Even if we're just 20 or 30 percent cheaper than the next best option, we think that's a good enough value proposition for customers.”