Vay expands remote driving car rental fleet, moves into downtown Las Vegas

The startup company Vay has expanded its remote driving short-term car rental delivery service in Las Vegas and moved into a new office.

Vay’s fleet of electric Kia eNiro vehicles has jumped from 100 to 175 this year as it provided over 60,000 rides in the Las Vegas Valley. The company is also expanding its employee base to the hundreds while moving into the seventh floor of their former Zappos building downtown.

It’s there that Vay’s remote drivers deliver and pick up cars daily, working from stations that resemble a video game area, with a seat, steering wheel and three screens that offer views around whatever vehicle they’re driving remotely.

“It holds room for us to scale dramatically,” Thomas von der Ohe, CEO and co-founder of Vay, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We almost doubled our fleet in the last quarter alone; and that includes not only the vehicles, but also obviously the remote drivers. So, now we have a lot of space here for our remote drivers to grow.”

How it works

Vay’s customers use a smartphone application to order a vehicle, provided they’re in the firm’s service area. A Vay employee remotely delivers the car and turns control over to the customer for up to 12 hours. Once in a customer’s possession, Vay will not communicate with drivers unless they need help.

Once a customer is done with the vehicle, they can either park it within Vay’s operating area or use a valet service, which allows the customer to get out at a safe spot without needing to find a parking spot and turn control of the car back over to a remote driver.

Vay remote driver Ray Black said there is a significant difference between driving a car while seated in it on the road and driving remotely.

“The main difference is when you’re doing remote driving, you have to go with a safety-first mindset,” Black said. “Because obviously it’s such a new technology that we’re the first people in the world doing this. So, you really have to play it safe because people are just assuming it’s AI driving the car, when in reality, I’m a person, everyone here driving the cars are people. Especially going 25 mph on such a technology, you kind of just have to play it safe always.”

Service area

Vay’s service area includes downtown, the Strip, Chinatown, northeast Las Vegas, around UNLV and near Harry Reid International Airport. Only ride pickups and drop-offs are required within an operating area; customers can drive it anywhere they please within the 12-hour time limit, von der Ohe said.

“We had a few customers that went to the Grand Canyon,” von der Ohe said. “We actually always see people in the outskirts of the city, that I would include Red Rock. We started to see some Valley of Fire and Hoover Dam trips that I think are all done as a day trip. Everything beyond that, we haven’t seen too much because we’re restricted to the 12-hour (rental limit) at this point.”

Despite Las Vegas’ reputation as a tourist-driven city, von der Ohe said about 80 percent of riders have been Southern Nevada locals. Vay has seen several repeat customers who use the rental service multiple times per week.

“People really continue to love the service, which is awesome to see,” von der Ohe said. “We have many people that take more than 10 trips a month. Many people have taken hundreds and hundreds of trips, like literally 400 to 500 trips on our platform.”

More cars equal less wait

Increasing Vay’s fleet has seen wait times for vehicles once ordered reduced from upwards of 30 minutes before the expansion to about 10 minutes after, von der Ohe said.

Vay also partnered with the hospitality staffing platform Goodwrx to provide Southern Nevada workers with an affordable, lower-stress mobility option. The partnership is aimed at hospitality workers, mainly those working on the Strip, where ride hail pricing can fluctuate throughout the day. Goodwrx offers employees ongoing discounts on Vay rides, providing a reliable and cost-effective option to travel to and from work each week.

Vay kicked off its Las Vegas operation in 2023 with just two available vehicles at UNLV and has steadily kept growing to reach the 175 cars in use today.

“Vay selected downtown Las Vegas as its first U.S. home in 2023, collaborating closely with the city of Las Vegas,” Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley said in a statement. “Since then, Vay has become a valued partner for our community, providing an affordable, sustainable and innovative service to residents of Las Vegas, as well as creating exciting job opportunities.”

Vay has a production facility in Henderson that can outfit up to 16 vehicles per week with the needed technology, mainly cameras, to operate on their system.

Texas semi operations

Aside from the Las Vegas Valley commercial operation, Vay assists with autonomous semi-trucks from Kodiak Robotics driving through Texas. In times where an autonomous 16-wheeler has an issue navigating something on a road, remote drivers over 1,000 miles away in Las Vegas can take over operations of the semi to guide it to a point where autonomy can again take over.

Remote drivers for the tractor-trailers must have their commercial driver license and have a similar setup to remote drivers operating Vay’s rental car fleet.

“It’s massive trucks, and they often still need help or need confirmation on certain things because the autonomy is not just there yet,” von der Ohe said. “So, we help them and when the truck gets started or if the autonomy doesn’t know, is there a pothole, or is this a shadow type of thing? These trucks then call for help, and we can then solve that situation and remotely drive for a minute or two and then hand it back to the remote truck. So that’s a very great use case showcasing what our technology can do.”