Nexar and Vay Partner to Bring Predictive AI Safety to the World's First Commercial Remotely Driven Fleet

Early design partnership integrates Nexar's BADAS incident prediction model into Vay's remote driving platform, adding a proactive layer of safety as the service scales

NEW YORK and LAS VEGAS, March 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Nexar, a leader in AI-powered mobility solutions and one of the largest distributed vision networks on U.S. roads, and Vay, a leading provider of automotive-grade remote driving technology, today announced an early adoption design partnership. The partnership is aimed at integrating Nexar's BADAS (Beyond ADAS), a foundation model that redefines how the industry approaches vehicle safety and autonomy, directly into Vay's remotely driven fleet. This integration will follow its initial implementation into their engineering fleet and will add a new, proactive layer of AI-powered safety to one of the most advanced mobility services in operation today.

"Remote driving puts humans and machines into a shared control loop, and safety has to work at that same level," said Zach Greenberger, CEO of Nexar. "BADAS was built to understand how real people actually drive—not how simulations behave. Partnering with Vay lets us prove, in a demanding real-life environment, that predictive intelligence can meaningfully reduce risk and support safer mobility at scale."

Vay operates the world's first remotely driven car rental service, where vehicles are delivered and parked by professionally trained human Remote Drivers located at Vay's Remote Driving Center—without a safety driver inside the car.

From the outset, Vay has designed its technology to meet the highest safety and security standards, with the objective of making remote driving safer than conventional driving. Remote Drivers operate in a controlled, professional environment free from distractions, and their driving behavior is continuously monitored, and structured break schedules are implemented. Together, these measures address the primary reasons for fatal road accidents, including distraction from mobile devices and other sources, fatigue, driving under the influence, and excessive speed.

By embedding BADAS into Vay's remote driving operations, Vay is taking a step forward in its safety approach: the two companies are demonstrating how predictive AI—trained on billions of miles of real-world driving—can help anticipate risk before an incident occurs, supporting safer decisions by human operators in complex, live traffic environments.

Traditional vehicle safety systems are largely reactive, responding only after a dangerous situation has already formed. Nexar's BADAS model takes a fundamentally different approach—proactively identifying risk before incidents occur, using AI models trained on real-world driving behavior.

Powered by Nexar's Real-World Data Engine, BADAS learns from ground-truth driving behaviors captured across one of the largest distributed vision networks on U.S. roads, which records more than 100M+ miles of road data every month. This scale allows the model to recognize shifts in real-world driver behavior and identify real-world edge cases that never appear in simulations.

For Vay, this means Remote Drivers gain augmented, AI-powered operational capabilities thanks to augmented safety features and vision-based data services—helping them anticipate risk earlier and operate more safely in live traffic environments.

"Safety is the foundation of everything we do at Vay," said Thomas von der Ohe, CEO and Co-Founder of Vay. "As we scale our service, we need safety systems that are proactive, not just reactive. Integrating Nexar's BADAS model into our system equips our Remote Drivers with advanced, augmented capabilities, enabling them to better anticipate risk."

This collaboration will mark the first known deployment of a large-scale, real-world incident prediction model designed specifically to support Remote Drivers operating vehicles on public roads. By combining Nexar's AI-powered road intelligence with Vay's remote driving platform, the companies are addressing safety at the intersection of humans, machines, and live traffic.

Vay has been operating its remotely driven car rental service in Las Vegas since January 2024, allowing customers to request an electric vehicle to be remotely delivered to their location. When it arrives, the Remote Driver disconnects from the vehicle, and the user takes over, driving it like a regular car. At the end of the trip, they exit the vehicle, and a Remote Driver resumes control, eliminating the time-consuming search for parking.

Nexar turns cars into vision sensors to understand the world. Its platform powers vision-connected services and apps at scale, making new vision-based applications for better driving powered by a crowd-sourced vision feed. Using anonymous, aggregated data captured from this network, Nexar has developed a portfolio of vision-based data services for the autonomous vehicle industry and public and private sector partners to make roadways safer and more efficient. More information at https://www.nexar-ai.com/

Vay develops automotive-grade technology for remote driving to enable new types of mobility services. Through the Vay app, users can request an electric vehicle to be remotely delivered to their location. After the car has arrived, the user takes over and drives it like a regular car. At the end of the trip, the user exits the car, and a Remote Driver takes over, eliminating the time-consuming search for parking. This creates the most affordable door-to-door mobility service at half the price of ride-hailing services. Since its launch, users have taken tens of thousands of rides and can hail a Vay car at a wide variety of locations throughout Las Vegas, including the busiest hotels on the Strip. Vay has recently expanded its offering to include B2B services, enabling remote driving for private cars, trucks, vans, and autonomous vehicles, among others.

Founded in Berlin in 2018 by Thomas von der Ohe, Fabrizio Scelsi, and Bogdan Djukic, the team of over 200 people combines the best of two worlds - software from Silicon Valley and automotive engineering from Europe. Vay has raised over $200 million in funding from global investors, including Grab, Kinnevik, Coatue, Atomico, and General Catalyst, as well as business angels such as F1 World Champion and entrepreneur Nico Rosberg and former Alphabet CFO Patrick Pichette.

Learn more about Vay at www.vay.io and follow us on social media: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

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SOURCE Nexar