Thomas von der Ohe on Vay’s new partnership with Kodiak (Interview)

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In today’s episode, I speak with Thomas von der Ohe, co-founder and CEO of Vay, a company transforming mobility with its automotive-grade Remote Driving technology. Vay’s door-to-door service provides a convenient alternative to both autonomous driving and private car ownership.

Thomas shares how Vay’s unique approach to remote driving differs from full autonomy, and discusses the company’s B2C driverless rental car service now available in Las Vegas. We also dive into their growing B2B strategy, and a newly announced partnership with Kodiak Robotics to enable remotely-driven trucks.

He also touches on the broader potential of this technology across sectors like personal vehicles, defense, agriculture, and package delivery — all part of Vay’s mission to reduce private car ownership and pave the way for safer, greener cities.

Kodiak Robotics Partnership

Vay’s new partnership with autonomous trucking company Kodiak Robotics will incorporate assisted autonomy technology into Kodiak’s fully autonomous technology stack. This allows Kodiak to complement its fully autonomous operations with remote human assistance as needed, enabling a human to remotely control a truck in certain low-speed and clearly-defined scenarios that benefit from human involvement. This is crucial because, as Kodiak Robotics Founder & CEO Don Burnette puts it:

No matter the maturity of an autonomous driving system, there are still scenarios that will benefit from human assistance, if only as a backup. Assisted Autonomy can be helpful in situations such as interpreting law enforcement hand signals. Rather than recreating the wheel on a remote assistance solution, we have chosen to partner with Vay, in our opinion, the industry leader, which we believe will expedite our ability to safely scale.

I like this hybrid approach since Vay can effectively use remote drivers to solve ‘the last 1% of autonomy’ and leave the more straightforward parts of autonomous driving to Kodiak. Take a listen to the episode and let us know what you think.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to Thomas von der Ohe and Vay

01:24 - What sets Vay apart in the AV landscape

02:24 - How Vay Driverless Rental Cars in Las Vegas work

04:22 - What is Vay’s expansion into B2B and partnership with Kodiak about?

05:01 - What are the skepticisms around remote driving?

08:03 - Background on Kodiak Robotics

09:14 - Details of Vay’s application in Kodiak’s autonomous driving

10:49 - Benefits of remote driving jobs

12:45 - How Vay solves the last 1% of autonomous driving.

16:27 - Some new verticals and opportunities for Vay’s remote driving tech

23:44 - Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Link to trucking video mentioned at 09:12 - Truck Driver Salary: Here's What It's REALLY Like to Be a Truck Driver!!

- Harry

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