While I did summon an Uber more than a few times while attending th 2025 CES tech expo in Las Vegas, these weren’t the most interesting rides I took by a long stretch. That honor goes to Vay, a remote-driving fleet currently operating in the city.
Vay’s pitch is that instead of you using a rideshare service or renting a car the classic way, it will deliver a car to you, assuming that you request it in an eligible locale. That car will pull up and park itself, but there won’t be a driver inside; instead, it’s being remotely driven by an operator in a custom rig, and when it’s delivered you’ll hop in the driver’s seat and be on your way.
When you’re done using the car, you’ll park it at a prearranged spot, and you might even see the Vay vehicle drive away, once again with no physical driver inside the vehicle. It’s a unique pitch, and in over a year of operations more than 6,000 rides have been taken in Las Vegas.
It’s potentially cheaper than an ordinary Uber or Lyft, and you get the freedom of driving yourself in a fairly modern vehicle. Vay’s fleet currently consists of Kia e-Niro vehicles, and it will have a fleet of 100 by the end of 2025. At least for now, the company guarantees that hiring one of its vehicles is 50% of the cost of hailing an Uber.
So I ventured off the strip to near Vay’s office for a demo. I watched as a Vay representative requested a car from the app, which is available for iOS and Android. Then, I spotted the Vay vehicle approaching, and, much to my delight, there was no driver inside. It approached a stop sign, then made an unprotected right turn, drove a bit more, and parked near me.
As this was a preplanned demo, I didn’t actually take over and drive myself. Instead, I got to be in the vehicle as it was remotely driven, giving me a sense of how this tech works, and it was a surprisingly smooth ride – perhaps because the car isn’t being driven using cameras and sensors, but rather by a human operator sitting in a custom rig with two pedals, a stirring wheel, and monitors that provide an exterior view.
It’s sort of like a custom racing rig for a gamer, but it’s connected over cellular to the Vay vehicle. The brand says it’s very low-latency, less than a blink of an eye.
While in the Vay vehicle, I heard from our driver who announced themselves when we stepped in, but also confirmed that they couldn’t see inside the car and then muted themselves for the rest of the ride. It’s somewhat similar to how, in a Waymo, you can chat with support, but you’re in a fully self-driven vehicle with an extensive sensor stack. You could also argue that a Vay vehicle is less likely to get stuck going in a loop in a parking lot, as it’s remotely driven by a real person and then driven by you (or whoever called it).
During my test ride of the remotely driven vehicle it made a few lane changes and turns, and ultimately took us for about a five to 10-minute ride around Las Vegas, ending in the parking lot at Vay’s offices. Here, I got to see the space where the remote drivers work, consisting of several custom rigs, each with three monitors arranged in a slight curve, a seat, a steering wheel complete with blinker stalks, and of course, pedals. The ‘drivers’ here were rocking headsets with a boom microphone, essentially off-the-shelf gaming ones.
As Vay sees it, the benefits of remote driving compared to self-driving include preserving jobs and an overall safer experience for the end user. Separately, I also saw a demo that showed Vay using this remote driving technology on an 18-wheeler truck, which even had some layer of autonomy for when it was on the highway. The idea here is that a traditional truck driver could operate the rig remotely, allowing them to be closer to their home and family rather than out on the road, but this concept is still at the testing stage.
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For now, though, Vay’s mission is to tempt you to try out the service in Las Vegas, and it plans to have a lot more capacity for rides – and more remote-driving bays – by the end of 2025. So, while your current options when visiting a city might be to hail a taxi, call a rideshare, or rent a car, in Vegas you might just be tempted to opt for a Vay, get a car delivered to you, and then drive it at your leisure.
And suppose remote driving isn’t necessarily your thing, but you’re just keen to try a new, electric Kia e-Niro. In that case, Vay can offer a car that’s parked near you within the app listed for ‘self pickup’. As for me, I’ll be trying driverless delivery the next time I’m in a town where Vay is.
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jacob.krol@futurenet.com (Jacob Krol)
