A Vay car in Berlin (Photo: Vay)

Hamburg and Vay launch worldwide first and unique teledrive mobility service without a driver in the car next year

• World-leading teledrive company Vay and Hamburg enter into a mobility partnership
• Vay’s service allows future users to order a car that is delivered by a teledriver and does not need to be parked when users arrive at their destination
• Vay’s electric and highly utilized fleet of vehicles can reduce traffic and air pollution in Hamburg

The future of on-demand services is arriving in Hamburg. The city and the world’s leading teledrive mobility company Vay enter into a unique mobility partnership. The goal is to launch an innovative mobility service in 2022, in which electric sharing vehicles are driven to the customer’s exact location via a teledriver in a few minutes. In the future, the service will be linked with services offered by Hamburg’s public transport system via the hvv-switch App. Further, it will connect areas in peripheral regions that are currently less well-served by public transport with the inner city, eliminate the search for a vehicle as well as parking space, and thus offer a convenient, cost-effective, and efficient alternative to owning a car in the city.

The start will be in the Hamburg Bergedorf district in 2022. Vay’s entirely new and advanced technology enables a person (“the teledriver”) to control a vehicle remotely (“teledriving”). Users will be able to order a Vay car via the App, which will be teledriven by a certified teledriver, and arrive within a few minutes without a driver in the car. The user then drives the vehicle to the destination. Upon arrival, the customer gets out of the car without having to park it, as the teledriver takes over again and teledrives the vehicle to the next customer. This eliminates the need to search for a vehicle, as the car arrives via teledriving, and also the search for parking space, because the car does not have to be parked. The precise and fast vehicle delivery results in enormous user benefits.

Anjes Tjarks, Hamburg’s Senator for Transport and Mobility Change: “The fact that we are launching a partnership and a globally unique mobility service with Vay highlights that Hamburg is a model city in Europe in the digital transport sector, which is putting innovative, smart and demand-oriented offerings into practice to sustainably improve the mobility of Hamburg’s citizens. In addition, we are strengthening Hamburg’s position as an innovation center and creating highly qualified jobs through new, future-proof technologies. The new mobility service contributes also to the mobility change in several ways: the electric car-sharing fleet can serve peripheral areas that are less well-served by public transport, offering a convenient and fast alternative to owning a car and thus reducing traffic, noise, and CO2 emissions. Our aim is to integrate the service into the hvv.”

Thomas von der Ohe, Co-Founder & CEO of Vay comments on the decision to launch the Vay service in Hamburg: “We share Hamburg’s vision of rethinking mobility from the ground up, putting citizens and the environment first. We also see the potential to offer Hamburg’s citizens a service that takes them to work, to the nearest bus or train station, or to the destination of their choice in a comfortable, environmentally friendly, and affordable way.” Vay’s service will offer an alternative to owning a car in peripheral regions of the city by providing the convenience of a door-to-door mobility service at a very low cost. Moreover, as the fully electric fleet is highly utilized, it can reduce the number of vehicles as well as air pollution in the city. The sharing aspect of the service will also noticeably reduce both road traffic and parking space shortages. Initially, Vay will start in the Hamburg Bergedorf district. The aim is to offer a supplement to public transport, for example for the commute to work, especially in Hamburg’s outskirts. Vay aims to gradually expand the service in more areas in Hamburg as well as more users.

Thomas von der Ohe with Anjes Tjarks (Photo: Vay)

The new service is intended to closely connect with classic public transport offerings, as Vay will expand the portfolio of services for Hamburg’s public transport users. In addition, the company is aiming to integrate the service into the digital platform hvv-switch, which bundles and makes available various mobility offerings from rail and bus to car-sharing and on-demand services.

Vay has worked with leading automotive and software experts to develop a technology that meets the highest and latest automotive safety standards. Vay’s teledrive system, which is equipped with redundancies throughout the system, such as the simultaneous use of multiple 4G mobile networks, can ensure the safety of the service and other traffic participants at all times. Vay has been testing its proprietary teledriving technology on public roads in Berlin and Hamburg for over two years, currently with safety drivers behind the wheel. Together with the city of Hamburg, Vay is working on the approval of a service without a driver in the vehicle for its launch next year.

Vay's Telestation setup (Photo: Vay)

About Vay,

Vay is a Berlin-based deep technology company that is on track to launch the first driverless, safety-certified, commercial fleet on European public streets. Starting next year. Unique about Vay is its teledrive-first approach to autonomous driving.

Vay’s fleet of vehicles is already operating with safety drivers across all of Berlin today. Recent technological and regulatory advancements will allow Vay to remove the safety driver from its vehicles next year.

Thomas von der Ohe, Fabrizio Scelsi, and Bogdan Djukic founded Vay in September 2018. Their team combines the best of two worlds – software and product experience from Silicon Valley and automotive hardware & safety engineering from Europe. Vay’s team members have previously worked at companies such as Tesla, Google, Waymo, Zoox, Byton, Argo, Amazon, Uber as well as Audi, BMW, and Daimler, and have founded various companies before.

Vay co-founders Fabrizio Scelsi, Thomas von der Ohe and Bogdan Djukic (Photo: Vay)

Vay has raised over 30m USD and is backed by leading European investors. The company has offices in Berlin, Germany, and Portland, OR.

For Media inquiries,
Agency for Transport and Mobility Transition
Press office I Dennis Krämer
Phone: 040 42841 1685
E-Mail: pressestelle@bvm.hamburg.de
Internet: www.hamburg.de/bvm
Twitter, Instagram: @bvm_hh

Vay
Friederike Reuter
Chief of Staff, Head of Strategy
Telefon: 0163 9068778
E-Mail: friederike@vay.io
Internet: http://www.vay.io