This 'driverless car' startup is doing the one thing robotaxi companies don't want to be caught doing

• Vay calls itself a "driverless car" rental service that wants to be cheaper than hailing an Uber.
• The startup uses remote driving to deliver its cars to customers without a human inside.
• Vay CEO Thomas von der Ohe said the company may pursue autonomous driving in the future.

In the world of robotaxis, there's a stigma around remote driving. Are you really "driverless" if there's a person — even remotely — at the wheel?

One startup is fully embracing it.

Vay is a Berlin-based startup founded by two engineers and a former Zoox employee.

The company is taking a somewhat contrarian approach to what it calls a "driverless car."

Instead of automating the ride-hailing service, which can be technically challenging and costly to scale, Vay wants to rethink how we rent cars.

To do so, Vay wants to leverage remote-driving technology and, eventually, autonomy to deliver cars without humans inside to people who need a private vehicle for less than a day.

Thomas von der Ohe, cofounder and CEO of Vay, told Business Insider that the goal is to be cheaper than an Uber and more convenient than a traditional brick-and-mortar rental program.

"It's basically by far the most affordable A to B transport," von der Ohe, a former technical program manager during the early days of Zoox, said. "It's half the price of Uber and half the price of robotaxis. How it works: We just bring the car, you then drive, and then when you're done, you don't have to park."

Autonomy's shifting timelines

Von der Ohe spent less than two years at Zoox when the company was just 60 people large and had yet to be acquired by Amazon. The Vay cofounder said he oversaw some of the first public testing of Zoox cars when there were safety drivers inside the vehicle.

At the robotaxi company, von der Ohe said he saw a goal with an ever-shifting timeline.

"It always felt like it was three years out," he said of autonomous driving. "And then every year it shifted by a year. So we wanted to have self-driving cars everywhere in 2020 at Zoox. And then it was 2021 and so forth."

Von der Ohe left Zoox in 2018. Instead of fixating on robotaxis, von der Ohe wanted to stay in mobility but work on something that could be faster to bring to market and easier to scale with less capital. Vay was born.

How it works

Customers order a car the same way they hail an Uber or Lyft through Vay's app. To rent a car, users have to upload a driver's license and a photo of themselves.

Vay proposes that users can get a car delivered to them without a driver within minutes, as long as they're within the service area or geofence. If you're out of the service area, then you're out of luck.

Once the car is delivered, the renter takes over.

The startup services Las Vegas, where it manages a fleet of 100 Kia Niros, a compact, all-electric SUV. Each Kia is retrofitted with four cameras. There are no other sensors, von der Ohe said.

The Vay cofounder told Business Insider that the service area is about twice the size of San Francisco.

Inside Vay's Vegas office, there are about eight driving stations, in which a trained human operator remotely controls Vay's vehicle fleet. The setup looks like a video game simulation with three computer screens and a disembodied driver's seat.

A large red button to the left of the driver's seat activates an emergency protocol during which the car pulls over to the side of the road.

Vincent Reddy, an operations lead for Vay, said that there are several criteria a remote driver needs to meet, including completing about 1,000 kilometers of remote driving. Reddy remotely drove Business Insider during a demo ride.

"It's similar to kind of like a high-grade racing sim," Reddy said of the driving experience. "The thing that feels the most different is not having the feedback of what it feels like driving over bumps and things on the road because the seat doesn't move. There's no G-force, or you don't get the feeling of accelerating or braking."

To deliver the cars, Vay only uses the remote-driving technology on local roads and stays under 25 mph. The car can go on the highway once the customer takes over the vehicle.

There were no notable incidents during a 10-minute driverless ride around the block of Vay's Vegas office.

50% cheaper than an Uber

Vay's value proposition to customers is that the service is cheaper and more flexible than hailing an Uber.

Von der Ohe told Business Insider that the service should be about 50% cheaper than the average Uber ride.

Users are charged by the minute, with a decreased price if they are parked, in case they, for example, need to grab groceries or hit the gym.

When Business Insider viewed the app, the pricing was at $0.35 per minute while driving and $0.05 per minute while parked. At those prices, a 30-minute drive to and from a destination, including an hour-and-a-half stop, would cost around $25.

When asked if the pricing will change based on demand, von der Ohe said the company doesn't yet have a pricing mechanism, such as surge pricing, in place, but expects there will be changes to the structure.

The CEO said he can keep the costs low because Vay's vehicle fleet doesn't have a complex sensor suite, and the remote operators manage multiple cars.

Von der Ohe said that as of January 2026, there is one remote operator for every 10 vehicles. However, that doesn't mean a remote driver is operating 10 vehicles at the same time. Instead, a remote operator can deliver one car and immediately move on to the next vehicle.

"So I have much more cars and remote drivers, and that's why we make it half the price," he said.

Vay's future

Vay employs about 200 people and raised more than $200 million, including a $60 million investment from Grab Holdings, the Singaporean tech company that owns Grab, the super app of Southeast Asia.

While von der Ohe told Business Insider that building a fully autonomous ride experience like Waymo is not on Vay's road map, the CEO said his startup will gradually add autonomous driving features.

"We're not in competition with them," von der Ohe said of robotaxi operators.

Since its founding, Vay has provided 35,000 trips, according to the CEO.

He said the service has especially seen high demand during the Consumer Electronics Show.

When Von der Ohe opened the app, the wait time to get a car was 31 minutes.

"It's extremely busy today already," he said. "It's a long way. It should be five."