German remote-driving startup Vay mentioned on Wednesday it had launched its first industrial service in Las Vegas the place a “teledriver”, or distant driver, delivers electrical short-term rental automobiles to clients then collects them after the rental.

The service is at present out there across the University of Nevada Las Vegas and town’s arts district renting out automobiles by the minute. Unlike autonomous autos, it depends on a distant human driver.

CEO Thomas von der Ohe instructed Reuters that throughout the first quarter Vay’s automobile fleet ought to quantity within the “low double digits.”

Vay has up to now raised about $110 million from traders together with Sweden’s Kinnevik, Coatue and France’s Eurazeo and has carried out assessments on European and U.S. roads with distant drivers and nobody behind the wheel.

Over time, the startup will step by step introduce autonomous options because it learns from the cameras included on its autos which might be less expensive than the lidar and radar expertise utilized by most autonomous automobile builders, von der Ohe mentioned.

“We see a decade or two of human-machine interaction where autonomous driving will play a part once it’s available and ready to deploy, and then the other part will always be done by a teledriver,” he mentioned.

But von der Ohe mentioned the startup sees a “massive use case” for distant driving features and is speaking to automakers about together with features for distant valet and different providers.

“If every vehicle drives off the production line equipped with teledriving… you can have an on-demand tele-valet that parks your car for you,” mentioned von der Ohe, “and then teledrives you home in your own car if you have a few glasses to drink.”

Vay’s launch comes at a difficult time for autonomous automobile builders.

General Motors’ Cruise autonomous automobile unit has struggled within the face of regulatory scrutiny after an October accident by which a San Francisco lady was dragged by a automobile.

(Reporting By Nick Carey; Editing by Jamie Freed)