Detroit pilot program makes the case for remote-controlled EV carsharing

Ever dreamed of ditching your car and all of its attendant responsibilities?

A new pilot program in Detroit aims to prove out the business case for making a car-free lifestyle easier. Corktown Carshare is a teleoperated EV carshare program that’s now available to residents of Corktown, a neighborhood that’s emerging as a mobility hub in the Motor City.

The pilot, a partnership between Sway Mobility and Mapless AI, is pitched as a way to free users from the headaches and costs of personal vehicle ownership, while still giving them access to destinations like big-box stores, healthcare providers, and the airport––while reducing traffic congestion and carbon emissions.

“Most car owners only drive their cars a few hours a week, which means many of us spend a lot of money for our cars to sit idle in a parking space or garage,” Sway Mobility CEO and co-founder Michael Peters said in a statement. “Expanding access to affordable, sustainable mobility options by providing carshare-as-a-service will enable more people––particularly those who cannot or do not want to own a private car––to get around town easily and cost-effectively.”

Remote work: Sway designs and operates carshare-as-a-service-programs around the country. Mapless AI provides remote driving tech. The program’s reliance on teleoperations is one of the things its founders believe sets it apart from other carshare businesses.

When there’s no user in the car, a remote operator in, say, Pittsburgh, sends commands to the vehicle over a cellular network link, Mapless AI co-founder and CTO Jeff Johnson explained.

“This is where, from a commercial standpoint, a lot of the issues arise, because…cellular is not super reliable in terms of latency or bandwidth…The tricky part comes in when you have to reliably and safely control a big vehicle…over an unreliable link,” he told Tech Brew. “And so a lot of our IP and a lot of our technical development has been around a safety system that lives on the car, and allows us to compensate for network degradations, network loss, that sort of thing.”

The program uses a single electric Kia Nero, which a remote operator sends to “high-demand locations” from which users can schedule trips. At the end of the day, the operator sends the vehicle to a charging station.

“What the addition of remote driving allows us to do is centralize all that charging in one place,” Peters told Tech Brew.

Business case: Program leaders estimate users could save thousands of dollars per year if they forgo a personal car and instead opt for carshares, bikeshares, and public transit. They cited estimates from AAA that owning a vehicle comes with an average of $12,000 in costs per year when you factor in insurance, fuel, maintenance, and car payments.

“If this helps you avoid having to buy a private vehicle, or maybe as a family you have one instead of two private vehicles,” Peters said, “it really has a big impact on your household transportation burden.”

Corktown Carshare’s pricing starts at $5 an hour. The pilot is slated to run for up to six months, after which the founders will decide whether it’s feasible to scale into a commercial operation. Eventually, they hope to replicate the model in other cities.

“Usually carshare works in the urban core of a city, but the farther you go out, you have to have an oversupply of vehicles scattered around,” Mapless AI co-founder and CEO Philipp Robbel said. “What [Detroit leaders] want…to prove as part of this program [is] that if you’re able to balance the fleet efficiently and cost-effectively, then you can have the same amount of cars and service more people, and therefore expand the scope of it.”