Remote-piloted car company removes safety drivers for rides downtown

Las Vegas startup Halo.Car has removed safety drivers from its remotely piloted vehicles, the company announced.

This means that riders in certain areas of Las Vegas can now get a driverless car delivered to them. Halo.Car has been testing its remotely driven cars in Las Vegas for just under a year.

The driverless, remotely piloted cars will be available only for customers in the Downtown area of Las Vegas, which is near the Arts District headquarters of Halo.Car, according to a news release from the company. Even with the removal of safety drivers, though, Halo.Car will still use a secondary vehicle to monitor how the driverless cars operate.

Halo.Car will still deliver cars with safety drivers to other areas throughout Las Vegas.

The company sees this development as a way to make electric vehicles more accessible for people and create “ubiquitous” car sharing, Halo.Car CEO Anand Nandakumar said.

“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,” Nandakumar said in a statement. “After testing for thousands of hours, we’ve proven that our remote-piloting technology is robust enough to take the safety driver out. This commercial launch of driverless delivery is a landmark achievement not only for our company, but for the entire transportation industry.”

Halo.Car announced in October that it had received $5 million in seed funding, which allowed the company to beef up its fleet from two to 50 vehicles. Adding vehicles allowed the company to shift its focus to a commercial launch.

The company uses proprietary technology to find the strongest internet connection to ensure its pilots can remotely drive the vehicles without losing a connection. This technology and the record of Halo.Cars on Nevada roads over the last year allowed the Department of Motor Vehicles to support the removal of safety drivers.

“The safety of pedestrians and road users in Las Vegas is our highest priority,” said Joseph Decker, the administrator of the compliance enforcement division for the Department of Motor Vehicles, in a statement. “Halo.Car’s unique technology and spotless safety record have given us confidence in their ability to operate on public roads. Nevada has been a national leader in new automotive technology since 2011. Halo.Car’s EV car sharing technology is exactly the type of innovation that we encourage and support.”

Halo.Car plans to expand its driverless vehicle delivery to more areas of Las Vegas throughout the year and expand its operations to other cities in 2024. The company previously told the Review-Journal it would like to expand to large cities where there could be a demand for short-term vehicle use such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami and New York.

No definite information was included in the news release on what cities the company would expand to or when these expansions would happen.

Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on Twitter.