German Remote-Driving Firm Hopes To Make Private Car Ownership Redundant (theguardian.com) 113
votsalo writes: A German company, Vay, offers a rental car service where the cars are driven by a remote driver to the customer, who then takes over driving the car. At the end of the rental, a remote driver takes over again to take the car away. The trained remote drivers sit in a driving station, with a steering wheel, foot pedals, screens, headphones, and even tactile feedback for things like bumps on the road.
Vay says the rental rate cost would be "about half of what a current car-sharing service costs." If he is talking about car-rental services that deliver cars to customers by on-site drivers, like this defunct San Francisco car rental company, then the claim about half the cost seems right.
Vay's founder used Las Vegas as a testing ground for the service and expects to launch in Germany soon. Las Vegas "had the necessary legal framework already in place," said von der Ohe, a graduate of computer science and entrepreneurship from Stanford. "It fitted on to three pages. Germany's ran to many more, but we've worked closely with the authorities here to make sure we can fulfil everything that's required of us, from technical to safety concerns. Now that the legislative landscape is in place, we're raring to go."
Vay says the rental rate cost would be "about half of what a current car-sharing service costs." If he is talking about car-rental services that deliver cars to customers by on-site drivers, like this defunct San Francisco car rental company, then the claim about half the cost seems right.
Vay's founder used Las Vegas as a testing ground for the service and expects to launch in Germany soon. Las Vegas "had the necessary legal framework already in place," said von der Ohe, a graduate of computer science and entrepreneurship from Stanford. "It fitted on to three pages. Germany's ran to many more, but we've worked closely with the authorities here to make sure we can fulfil everything that's required of us, from technical to safety concerns. Now that the legislative landscape is in place, we're raring to go."
So in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
... its just a taxi with the driver sitting elsewhere. How is that going to make car ownership redundant exactly?
The sort of people who keep making this stupid type of claim must be people who've never owned a car and know just how damn useful it is to literally go out the door and get into it, no booking, no waiting, no "we'll be with you in 30 mins", no "sorry we can't wait for you", no "sorry, that destination wasn't on your booking list".
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I am curious about the fail-over mode in case of RF jamming or any other communication failure. VIP convoy like the US president ones often jam all radio frequencies around them for safety concern. It seems to me the cars would need to be self-driving as well at least to the extend where it should be able to safely pull over while going 60 mph and encountering a communication failure for any reason.
Re:So in other words... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're probably right. Last year we bought a relatively inexpensive car that has some semi autonomous features, not just lane keeping, but lane assist, where it actively steers to the road, as well as optional speed control that speeds up and slows down to posted speed limits. Of course cars have been braking n their own and slowing to traffic, mine also supports full stop and resume.
Anyway, it worried me at first, but its shocking how quickly you start t trust it.. almost...
I suspect something like this would have to support autonomous driving, at least to the point of avoiding an accident and maybe even trying to park on the side of the road.
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Yeah. No waiting, no "sorry, we are experiencing above-normal demand, we have no drives available right now, please call later". Also, I do not have to empty the trunk of my car every time I go home. I can leave some things in it, stuff that I mostly use when not at home.
Maybe the service would be useful, but it will not "make car ownership redundant". Probably the person who thinks that always had a personal driver, so, for him, a private car is the same as a taxi.
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"Probably the person who thinks that always had a personal driver"
And definately isn't a parent of young kids and neither does he own a pet. The amount of stuff you often need to take - not to mention child seats - and the mess they can make in a car means some taxis won't transport the former and most won't do the latter.
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Well, personalization is easy. If the car is there for you, your settings can be sent to the car so everything's adjusted the way you had it last time. It's not rocket science. Radio stations, your phone, contacts, etc., all can be stored in a driver or user profile.
At which point, all that information is immediately available to law enforcement without a warrant, under the Third Party Doctrine.
And who is responsible when that personalization information gets hacked?
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Yeah. No waiting, no "sorry, we are experiencing above-normal demand, we have no drives available right now, please call later". Also, I do not have to empty the trunk of my car every time I go home. I can leave some things in it, stuff that I mostly use when not at home.
This. Sharing a car is easy. Sharing a car trunk is much harder.
To give you an idea, my car has been in the shop for two weeks, and I've had a loaner. I realized on day three without my car that my conducting batons were in the back of the car, and I had to borrow one. Strike one.
I kept thinking that I would get my car back soon, so I didn't keep stuff in the car. I realized on day four that I had incorrectly packed my orchestra music instead of my jazz band music and had to make a trip home for it. S
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Indeed, a baton in the trunk. (sic)
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Indeed, a baton in the trunk. (sic)
??? It's in a case... :-D
The reason I didn't have the batons and music stand was because before I dropped off my car for repair, I had to unload all of the following out of my car:
And didn't know that I was going to need the last one until afte
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Ah, so you're a bit like Pink Floyd's tour trucks then.:-)
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It's a classic case of someone living in a big city and only ever considering city use of the car.
There are currently four 25kg bags of oats for my horses in the back of my car. I'll carry them down to the stable sometime this weekend when my back damned well feels like it.
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We own a car (one), and yet I've used the local car club a few times. It's great, I book it, walk maybe 5 minutes to get to it and then just drive it away. I put it back a while later, lock it and forget about it. There are 3 cars all within 10 minutes walk, so if one is booked, I can probably use another. There have been times where they're all booked though - particularly at short notice.
So no, the car club hasn't made car ownership redundant, but it sure has saved us from having two cars.
I could imagine
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Good point. The headline is hyperbole: "car ownership will be redundant." Of course it won't and sites like Slashdot will be full of (perfectly reasonable) reasons why this rental outfit won't make car ownership "redundant." But, as you point out, there may still be enough of a use case to reduce car ownership, especially the ownership of a second car. And this niche may well be enough for this rental company to make a good profit. They probably aren't doing themselves any favours by exaggerating, but that
Re: So in other words... (Score:2)
Now the car arrives at your place, with nobody at the rental company having to drive around. Much easier. Also I could rent for
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Have you considered that people living in a city might not be able to park a car next to their house or would have to pay that parking space by the hour?
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And? A minority use case isn't going to make car ownership redundant plus in most european cities there's decent public transport.
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I have never owned my car my entire life, and I have a task that would need a car once in 2-3 years or so -- I got used to the public transport. But, there's a ton of cars parked everywhere, as apparently some people still use them. If cheap car rental was available, a good part of them could get rid of the hassle of a personal car.
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A personal car isn't "hassle" any more than owning your own home is hassle compared to renting. Rental cars are zero use if you have kids or pets, commute to work by car or need to go on long trips fairly often.
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You need a home 24/7/340, you need a car only sometimes. "Parking" the house is a hassle too (need the flowers watered, etc). An analogy to the rental car would be going abroad for a few years -- in that case you rent the house away.
Not using a car is unthinkable to Americans, most of whom need one just to go to the nearest store -- but the company in TFA is in Germany.
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I live in europe too and we as a family would be screwed without our car. PT and taxis are NOT a replacement for the frequency and places we visit. In fact if we used taxis we'd have paid out the same price as a 2nd hand car within a year.
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A personal car isn't "hassle" any more than owning your own home is hassle compared to renting.
I would prefer to sleep in my house than my car :-)
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Every time you get in a car you are risking your life. That's a lot more hassle.
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I have never owned my car my entire life, and I have a task that would need a car once in 2-3 years or so -- I got used to the public transport. But, there's a ton of cars parked everywhere, as apparently some people still use them. If cheap car rental was available, a good part of them could get rid of the hassle of a personal car.
Public transport does not exist across much of the US. Here, for a simple trip across town expect an hour and a half for a 20 minute drive which can be up to 40 minutes in rush hour. It’s insane that anyone would think paying a premium for a car delivered to your door, at a price vastly exceeding ownership, is even remotely viable. If you want people to give up cars you need to first massively spend on infrastructure to put adequate and inexpensive public transportation in first, not busses or a ca
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"This is my use case, so nobody else has a different one."
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We were talking about European cities... And indeed, I'm a Polack living a bit east of the country in TFA.
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A minority use case
Claiming someone doesn't need a car is a "minority" is truly the most American thing on this site. I live in a city where about 40% of people over 40 don't even have a drivers license.
Re: So in other words... (Score:3)
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Have you considered that people living in a city might not be able to park a car next to their house or would have to pay that parking space by the hour?
Only some people live in an incredibly dense high rise environment. Most American and European cities sprawl without the extreme density that makes this practical. In reality people want to be self sufficient and not pay for every slice of life’s necessities as a reoccurring service fee vastly outpacing the cost of ownership.
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The extreme density should be the norm. Living in a suburb should cost a lot more than it does now.
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The extreme density should be the norm. Living in a suburb should cost a lot more than it does now.
I’ve said it many times in this discussion, massive infrastructure spending to ensure adequate and inexpensive public transportation needs to come before removing the only realistic means of being able to move about.
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Yes it's clearly not a replacement for all car owners, and it's just a slight variation on the long existing options of "have a rental car delivered" and "use a taxi", and all it really does is reduce costs for the rental company as they no longer need to send a physical driver with the car and a second vehicle to bring him back.
What makes sense is when combined with remote working, grocery deliveries, walk to work/school etc. If you no longer have a daily commute you likely don't need a car full time, or y
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Yes it's clearly not a replacement for all car owners, and it's just a slight variation on the long existing options of "have a rental car delivered" and "use a taxi", and all it really does is reduce costs for the rental company as they no longer need to send a physical driver with the car and a second vehicle to bring him back.
I seem to remember reading an article on Slashdot about a different rental company delivering cars with a human driver and an e-scooter in the trunk. The delivery driver would ride away on the scooter. I haven't heard anything since then, presumably it didn't work out?
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I don't have a car so use a car sharing service (car club). The service is okay, but there are a number of problems with these schemes that this system is not going to fix. Price is just one of them and not really the biggest issue.
The first thing is that, while you can generally get a car to pop out to the grocery store, or take your kids to swim lessons, on that day you just want to go to the beach because, well, it's nice weather and everyone is going to the beach, guess what - you can't get a car becaus
Re: So in other words... (Score:2)
Re: So in other words... (Score:3)
In certain European cities, street parking is an issue. For car owners it's hard to find a spot, and possibly expensive (owning a car is generally expensive). And for everyone else, well cars use a lot of space. For both parking and circulating. It would be nice to reclaim that space, and some cities are doing that in certain ways like choosing certain streets to motorised vehicles. Keep in mind that public transport, cycling and walking are all popular means of transportation, unlike in the US.
Living in on
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Re: So in other words... (Score:2)
Does this still hold in large cities? If everyone tries to get out of New-York with their car at the same time, how well does that go?
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Does this still hold in large cities? If everyone tries to get out of New-York with their car at the same time, how well does that go?
If everyone tried to use the subway at the same time, what would happen?
Re: So in other words... (Score:2)
That's irrelevant. The point made above is that you need a car to escape in times of sudden onset disaster. I am asking if that also holds in large cities. Generally speaking, the whole discussion is I think more interesting about large cities, since it's already clear that in less dense areas you need a car anyway.
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The idea of keeping supplies in the trunk
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"... its just a taxi with the driver sitting elsewhere. How is that going to make car ownership redundant exactly?"
The half price part.
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The difference is that you can drive the vehicle after the remote driver "drops off" the vehicle.
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They don't drive you around, they just drive the car to you, and "pick it up" when you're done.
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How is that going to make car ownership redundant exactly?
The same way taxis do it, except with different utility and price.
The sort of people who keep making this stupid type of claim must be people who've never owned a car and know just how damn useful it is to literally go out the door and get into it, no booking, no waiting, no "we'll be with you in 30 mins", no "sorry we can't wait for you", no "sorry, that destination wasn't on your booking list".
The sort of people who keep making these posts are the type who have never lived in a walkable city where the idea of buying a car that sits unused for most of its life is truly absurd given how it is usually faster and cheaper to take public transport and just go to your destination without being a slave to driving a motor vehicle.
Look I don't mean to throw shade, but you're not German. You have no idea what it's like since you grew up on a
How do these companies get startup money? (Score:3)
Re:How do these companies get startup money? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, their business plan will get a boost the moment self-driving cars arrive for real. They'll just dump the remote drivers in favour of AI. The core of their business plan -- renting cars -- will stay unchanged.
Their innovation is making a better stop-gap before then.
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which already exist and are slowly spreading everywhere
"Slowly" is important. They think they can make a business for themselves *quickly*. The eventual takeover of self-driving cars is way past the end of this fiscal quarter.
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which already exist and are slowly spreading everywhere
They exist in a very limited set of cities serviced by Waymo, and precisely no where else. Expansion of such services is glacial.
Also this has nothing to do with self-driving cars. This is for people who want to drive their own (rented) cars. What service they are competing with is Hertz Gold preferred drop-off / pick-up, where if you need a car they bring it for you and come get it from you when you're done.
It's not about ownership (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about personal independence. People will never give it up, and rightly so.
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I think you might be surprised how much personal independence people are willing to give up if it works out cheaper. See eg the willingness to sign over any personal data at all to gain access to a news website for free. No, not everyone, but the vast majority will.
But that's the crucial question: Does it work out cheaper than owning a car? The fact they don't make the comparison probably tells you everything you need to know.
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I guess I have never lived in such a place where this would work. Even where there has been public transit in my life, it was easily triple the time that a car world take so there was pretty much no choice.
It takes triple the time for me to get into the city on the bus instead of driving. But if I ride the bus, I can read a book, play with my phone, have a nap, hell I can even be drunk if I want to. It's cheaper than driving and I don't have to think about parking when I get there.
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And that's great if you don't have anything else to do.
I could say the same about driving. My point about public transport is that I can do something else at the same time. Like catching up on email. browsing the web, watching TV, reading a book (or non-fiction if we're trying to be productive) or loads of other things that would be irresponsible to attempt while driving.
Most people do have something better to do. If they weren't stuck driving a car, they could start doing it.
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Ahahaha! Perfect response!
Re: It's not about ownership (Score:2)
Given current fuel prices and looking at the last 5 years of data, it costs me 18 pence in fuel per mile in my own car. 27p per mile when taking insurance, repairs and car value depreciation into account.
I doubt anyone can offer that kind of a price point and be competitive.
Plus, it's about being able to have a car ready and being able to go anywhere I'd like at a moment's notice, about living your life to your maximum potential. Taking short and long drives alike in the car you know, in a car that fits you
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Nothing to worry about. Remote driving is an insane idea. It's equivalent to sitting in a simulator, but simulators are terrible at anything other than practising set procedure. The number of crashes that would occur just because of failure to see/hear around them will be off the charts.
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It's about personal independence. People will never give it up, and rightly so.
"You'll own nothing, and love it"
The people that want you to give up that independence will never give up, either.
Re: It's not about ownership (Score:2)
Fuck them.
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Personal dependence is a thing for people who are kept in the captivity of a poorly designed city. Freedom for those people is owning a car. This company is in Germany. In many German cities freedom is *not needing* a car. I have several family members who live in Hamburg, Berlin, and Vienna, and none of them have owned cars for over a decade. It's a pointless device for them that provides them no benefit worth the expense. Not when for the couple of days a year they need a car they can use a carshare servi
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I need to move so badly. I hate owning a car. I hate driving 15+ minutes risking my life just to get groceries.
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I hear you. I used to live in a county with American style sprawling suburbs, no alternative transport, no mixed use areas. Getting groceries meant taking my pickup truck for a 15min drive to a mega supermarket and shopping for the week because who wants to do that often...
I didn't know any better, but my eyes were blown open in Europe. I don't have a personal car now. I have 3 shopping centres within walking distance from my house (though I normally cycle there). It takes me 15min to do the entire trip, th
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I understood it as a lack of dependency on an ongoing service provided by someone else.
Bankrupt company in San Frasisco... (Score:2)
I mean the only grounds for comparison could possibly be a bankrupt company in San Fransisco. There are no other successful hire car companies which deliver cars anywhere in the world at all. If it can't work in SF, it can't work at all.
Sarcasm, sure, but I use Nationwide Hire in the UK. They deliver cars and then collect them. They are also one of the cheaper options.
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I mean the only grounds for comparison could possibly be a bankrupt company in San Fransisco. There are no other successful hire car companies which deliver cars anywhere in the world at all. If it can't work in SF, it can't work at all.
Sarcasm, sure, but I use Nationwide Hire in the UK. They deliver cars and then collect them. They are also one of the cheaper options.
I was wondering about the human in person delivery system model. Do they send two vehicles out to return the person who drives the rental car to you or collects it afterwards?
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I'm in London: I think they usually arrive and depart on pubic transport, but I'm not entirely sure.
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I'm in London: I think they usually arrive and depart on pubic transport, but I'm not entirely sure.
Okay, that's a very workable solution.
Anything that sticks (Score:2)
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If you want to reduce car ownership, improve public transportation, though I know it is a foreign concept in the US. Too socialist for the greatest country on earth, eh?
I fear you might have drifted into your personal version of "idealized world", but at least you got the obligatory dig in. 8^) It would be rather difficult to serve a nation that has so many different population groups in so many different geographical areas.
network lag
This. A million times this. I fear that with the business of cellular handoff, weather issues (oh yeah - rain - especially on 5G) these folk will discover that lag is real. Not to mention this will obviously be restricted to areas with solid coverage.
This can't work out cheaper than a car club (Score:1)
The only difference between this proposed one car club and a standard one, is having non-fixed pick-up/drop-off points. But tbh I'd say 99% of the time I want to p
Then why not just remote drivers all the time ? (Score:1)
If this was good why would they stop at delivering the car, you could disrupt the market with all cabs taxis rental cars & private cars being driven by remote drivers all the time ?
Obviously someone has pivoted from some failed idea here that did not raise enough VC money
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The benefit is smaller for a taxi...
If you deliver a rental car you need to send two vehicles so the delivery driver is able to get back. That either means sending two cars and two drivers, or having bikes small enough to fit in the trunk of the rental car.
A taxi driver will stay with the vehicle for the whole day, and then drive home in the evening.
Connection issues? (Score:2)
I'm curious how they ensure the remote driver getting a continuous, low-latency, high-bitrate, zero-interruptions video from the car (and same for the inputs the other way).
I'm guessing that making a car remotely drivable is less expensive than making it fully self-driving, but that also means that doesn't exist as a backup. So let's say the connection has a 2 second hiccup while merging onto a road and then rolls straight into oncoming traffic.
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Not only that, but when you take the risk of personal injury out of the equation, it seems like the tolerance for risk and distraction will creep up. After all, you only have so much focus to give before you are lulled into a false sense of complacency.
You know that this will be a race to the bottom of the salary ladder and the best, most well-intentioned people will not be hired.
Also, can you possibly have the same visibility in a remote location that you would have in person? I imagine that there will be
Insurance mess (Score:2)
So, since the customer is driving the car, it seems to me they need some kind of auto liability insurance.
Auto insurance has been skyrocketing in the US due to the insane cost of purchasing a car or repairing one after an auto accident these days.
I predict the end of personal auto ownership in the next couple of decades because of these cost factors.
A better system is one in which the car summoned is fully autonomous.
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So, since the customer is driving the car, it seems to me they need some kind of auto liability insurance.
I suspect it will be similar to renting a car today.
Auto insurance has been skyrocketing in the US due to the insane cost of purchasing a car or repairing one after an auto accident these days.
Has it? Mine has gone up, but not all that much. More like inflationary creep over the many years I've been driving. Might be depending on the definition of skyrocketing.
But no doubt, this is a pretty stupid idea, with more problems than solutions. Some of those issues can't be fixed.
Time warp? (Score:4, Insightful)
These people would seem to not only have a tremendous service, but apparently have circumvented the laws of physics. Or maybe the cars have really, really long extension cords.
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I think you're just thinking short sighted. As it stands cars don't need uninterrupted perfect coverage that is lag free. Combine this with current advancements in self driving and the idea of remotely piloting a vehicle to a destination isn't just obvious, it's actually sounding like it may be down right obsolete.
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I think you're just thinking short sighted. As it stands cars don't need uninterrupted perfect coverage that is lag free. Combine this with current advancements in self driving and the idea of remotely piloting a vehicle to a destination isn't just obvious, it's actually sounding like it may be down right obsolete.
Lag is pretty common. With 1 second lag, a car traveling at 32 kpm will travel around 32 meters. Even .5 second lag can be an issue. Things happen quickly at speed.
A recipe for disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
All in all this sounds like a terrible idea.
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So this remotely driven car goes through a tunnel, or the car skids, or the signal drops out then what happens?
Presumably we rely on one of the many hundreds of Slashdot stories we've run over the past decade plus detailing the advancements in self driving technology. Or do you think every new piece of kit works completely in isolation?
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Worse yet, the pilot has nothing to lose. Could you imagine a disenfranchised 'driver' suddenly saying, "fuck it"?
"Watch this" as the car is driven at full speed off of a bridge or into a freight train.
Subscription-based cars (Score:2)
when some punk kid driving the remote car thought (Score:2)
when some punk kid driving the remote car thought an parade kills people who will do the 1000 years?
the car owner? the car renter? As the EULA will likely put both on the hook while the remote service gets off.
data plan costs? (Score:2)
lets see an unlimited / With No Throttling cell link and full speed roaming will be needed.
"Car sharing" is not the same as car rental (Score:2)
The phrase is key to this company's pitch. They compare their pricing model to "car sharing" because it's far more expensive than "car renal" if you want to drive for any significant distance.
If you want to drive 10 minutes to somewhere, Uber or Lyft aren't very expensive. If you want to drive to another city, or for a few days, Uber and Lyft will either not be an option at all, or very expensive.
This company is essentially a car rental company that brings you the car (using a remote driver). But they want
They should send me a their car (Score:2)
Rentals gonna be like (Score:2)
and the car tells you to shut up