Driverlessly Delivered Rental Cars are Becoming a Thing

Photo by Mike from Pexels

A little over a year ago, I published an article in Venturebeat arguing that the future of rideshare will be a vehiclehail: a carshare that you hail on demand, that is driverlessly delivered in minutes, and that you drop off at your destination.

In the article, I argued that vehiclehail would become the dominant mode in the on-demand rides market, and it would be the first commercial application of driverless tech on public roads at scale. Since then, a number of startups have launched or announced their intention to pursue the vehiclehail model. A partial list:

• Vay.io, a German startup, raised a $95M series B in December to launch a teleoperated vehiclehail in Hamburg in 2022.
• Halo Car, a Las Vegas-based grad of the T-Mobile 5G Open Innovation Lab, announced a teleoperated vehiclehail service in July ’21. This month, they demonstrated their tech by driverlessly powering the pace car at the Indy Autonomous Challenge at CES.
• Imperium Drive, a UK startup and Techstars graduate, is piloting a teleoperated vehiclehail service in Milton Keynes.
• Arcimoto, an Oregon-based light EV maker, has announced their intention to make their right-sized ultra-efficient vehicles available for driverless vehiclehail.
• Faction, a second wave EV startup in South SF, is developing the driverless tech to unlock vehiclehail in the small format vehicle market.
• Kyte, a rental car service that delivers to your door, has made public their intention to leverage driverless vehicle delivery on their platform. They’ll be working with unnamed partners to pilot and then launch the tech over the next couple of years.
• There are at least 3 other companies that are actively pursuing a vehiclehail model in stealth.

While vehiclehail is still a contrarian bet in the AV space, vehiclehail is picking up real steam. I’m particularly excited that ultralight EV’s are a substantial part of the fray.

Conclusion: If you want to change the world, publish an obscure thought piece during a pandemic to a limited audience and watch the magic happen.