Halo.Car, a Las Vegas car sharing startup, announced this week that it will remove the human operator from its vehicles later this year. That marks the final step before it’s ready for its commercial launch.
The company does not pretend to offer autonomous technology (not for now, anyway), but instead relies on human drivers, operating its vehicles remotely from a central location to move them to their customers. Once there, the clients can drive their electric vehicles normally.
When they’re done with the car, the customer can just get out and stop worrying, because the car will be driven away by a remote operator once again – much like a drone, if you will. That puts the startup in competition with companies like Zipcar, while eliminating the need for the customer to find their vehicle themselves. Until now, though, it has had to have a human operator in the vehicle at all times in order to ensure that the system worked perfectly.
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“Safety is of the utmost importance, which is why we use human drivers rather than autonomous technology,” said Anand Nandakumar, Founder and CEO of Halo.Car. “Autonomous vehicles today call on human intervention when they face a challenge because the technology isn’t as smart as a human. Using remote human drivers instead of autonomy is a faster and safer way to get ‘driverless’ cars deployed to customers.”
Now that it is preparing to stop using safety operators, it will begin fully-remote vehicle deliveries. From there, it will be able to expand beyond Las Vegas and into other markets. By the end of 2023, it expects to have a fleet of 1,000 electric vehicles in operation.
Image screenshot T-Mobile / YouTubeHalo.Car vehicles are operated remotely over T-Mobile’s Ultra Capacity midband 5G network, as well as on other when necessary. This is used to transmit a video feed to a driver in what is effectively a simulation rig. Although the company is open to using autonomous vehicles in the future, it says that the remote drivers are a good stop gap while that technology is developed.
The company’s expansion follows the announcement that it has closed a $5 million seed round led by the tech fund At One Ventures, with participation from T-Mobile Ventures, and others.