Halo.Car Launches Driverless Delivery of EVs in Las Vegas

Halo.Car, a US provider of on-demand electric vehicles (EVs), has announced the removal of safety drivers from its remote-piloted vehicles in Las Vegas. The driverless launch follows four years of testing where safety drivers were present inside Halo.Car's vehicles during remote piloting.

Halo.Car retrofits its fleet of electric vehicles with cameras, modems, antennas, and other custom-developed components to enable remote driving of the vehicle.

Trained 'remote pilots' at a Halo.Car operations centre use video and sensor data streamed from the vehicle to remotely drive the vehicle.

When they complete a remote delivery, they hand over control of the vehicle to the customer and connect to the next vehicle awaiting remote delivery or collection.

The vehicles are remote-piloted over T-Mobile 5G, with AT&T and Verizon used for additional stability.

The company has been remote-delivering vehicles with safety drivers to customers since 2022.

Anand Nandakumar, CEO and Founder of Halo.Car, says: "Rolling out driverless delivery is a huge step towards our goal of offering ubiquitous carshare on-demand. We want to make it so easy to get a car on-demand that you no longer need to own a car, or use a rideshare service – you just call a car to drive when you need to go somewhere. Driverless delivery is critical to making this vision of on-demand vehicles economically viable."

He adds: "Our transition to driverless deliveries marks a significant milestone for us as a company. It proves that our remote-piloting technology is not just innovative, but commercially viable and ready to be scaled up."

Halo.Car plans to grow its fleet in Las Vegas to hundreds of vehicles before expanding to more cities in 2024.