Remote-controlled cars allowed to drive on public roads

Since December 1, a vehicle no longer needs to be steered by a person in the driver's seat . A new regulation with the cumbersome name "Regulation on Exceptions to Road Traffic Regulations for Remotely Controlled Motor Vehicles" (Straßenverkehr-Fernlenk-Verordnung, StVFernLV) allows cars to be controlled from the outside, for example, from a control center.

The German federal government passed the StVFernLV in the summer. It came into force on December 1. "Vehicles may be remotely controlled from central control centers during a five-year test phase," announced the federal government.

This explicitly does not concern autonomous and driverless vehicles, such as the robotaxis from Alphabet subsidiary Waymo or from Pony.ai, which Bolt wants to bring to Europe. The regulation applies to services like Vay or Elmo, which remotely control vehicles from a control center.

Vay tests in Hamburg and Berlin

The Berlin-based company Vay wishes to build a car-sharing service. However, customers don't have to pick up the car on the roadside or in a parking lot – Vay delivers it. In the control center, the remote operators sit at control stations with steering wheels, pedals, and monitors and chauffeur the car to the location requested by the customer. The control center and the vehicle don't even have to be in the same location: Vay has already remotely controlled cars in Berlin from Barcelona.

Vay has been testing this for several years on public roads in Berlin and Hamburg without safety personnel on board. In Hamburg, in the Bergedorf district, the company has already been allowed to offer its service with an exceptional permit since the end of 2022. In Las Vegas, Vay has been operating regularly since the beginning of 2024.

This type of service is intended to make sharing vehicles more efficient: Ideally, the remote operator picks up a vehicle from one customer and immediately delivers it to the next, so that it doesn't have to be parked.

(wpl)