Could your next rental car be a robotaxi? T-Mobile teams with startup for 5G driverless electric car service

Here's a new twist in self-driving cars: Your ride arrives and it's an electric vehicle with no driver. Then, you drive your rental car where you want and once you arrive, you exit the vehicle and it takes off on its own.

Later this year, Las Vegas will be the testing ground for a pilot program sending driverless EVs, driven by a remote pilot, to customers who order a car via a mobile app. When the car arrives, the driver gets in and drives to their destination. After the rental driver leaves, the remote driver directs the EV to its next location.

Autonomous and driverless car technology company Halo plans to make the service available initially in urban parts of the Las Vegas Valley. Remote drivers have a 360-degree video view – just as if they were in the car – and additional sensors eliminate blind spots. Video and data are sent via T-Mobile's 5G network, the provider and Halo announced Thursday.

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"You push a button and summon an electric car. It just comes to your doorstep," Anand Nandakumar, the founder and CEO of Halo, told USA TODAY. "You hop in and you drive the car to your destination and once you are done, hop off and walk away and the car just disappears."

5G behind driverless 'magic'

T-Mobile, which launched its consumer 5G network last year, also in 2020 co-founded the 5G Open Innovation Lab along with several other tech companies including Dell, Intel and Microsoft. Halo has been in stealth mode for two years and was a startup participant at the lab.

Despite the potential benefits of 5G connectivity including faster data speeds on smartphones and a growing network of internet-connected devices, there's not many real-world examples of how 5G can change things. Halo's remote-piloted cars could change that.

“So many industries are already being transformed today by 5G, and it’s the startups and entrepreneurs – developers like Halo – that are making the magic happen,” said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert in a statement to USA TODAY. “True, nationwide 5G is powering groundbreaking new products and services that will change nearly every facet of our world, connecting people and things at massive scale.”

Originally based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Halo began testing remote control of EVs in California in August 2020. In February of this year, the company moved its testing to Las Vegas, where Halo is now headquartered.

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In addition to remote drivers piloting the Kia Niro crossover SUVs from Halo's mission control, Halo equips the vehicles with an artificial intelligence-driven "Advanced Safe Stop mechanism" that automatically brings the cars to a full stop when there's a potential safety hazard or a system anomaly, the company said.

Risks in self-driving car tests

The development of self-driving cars has been underway for more than four years with big tech names such as Amazon, Apple and Google's parent company Alphabet involved, along with Tesla, Ford, GM and other traditional automakers.

But there have been setbacks such as the April crash of a Tesla in the Houston area that killed two passengers. In that case, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report the driver had been behind the wheel but came to no conclusions about the crash's cause. Tesla says on its website that drivers are supposed to keep their hands on the wheel at all times, ready to take over when the semi-autonomous system is not able to steer, accelerate or brake on its own.

Uber sold its self-driving division last year to Aurora, a startup headed by Chris Urmson, who previously led Google's autonomous vehicle efforts. That came after a self-driving Uber vehicle, with a backup operator in the driver's seat, fatally hit a 49-year-old woman in Tempe, Arizona, in March 2018. (Uber invested $400 million in Aurora, which is backed by Amazon, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi joined the startup's board.

Las Vegas has been a hotspot for the testing of self-driving vehicles with demonstrations held during the Consumer Electronics Show beginning in January 2017. Between May 2018 and February 2020 in Las Vegas, Lyft and autonomous tech company Aptiv delivered more than 100,000 robotaxi self-driving rides, with a human driver sitting in the driver's seat. Lyft sold its self-driving unit in April to Woven Planet Holdings, a Toyota subsidiary for about $550 million.

Halo's program seeks to build trust in autonomous vehicles, as well as increase the use of electric cars, Nandakumar said. "Consumers never get an opportunity to actually see an autonomous car deployed on public roads. They never get a chance to interact with it or take rides with it," he said.

Pricing has not yet been announced, but Halo robotaxi rides will be "highly affordable for everyone," the companies said.

Beyond that, Halo's service seeks to solve the problem of "the last mile between your last transit stop and your workplace or your home," said John Saw, executive vice president of advanced and emerging tech at T-Mobile and a member of the 5G Open Innovation Lab's advisory board. "This is a great use case. It helps us show the world, hey, we are not just talking about it but we are showing what we can do with 5G."

Contributing: Nathan Bomey

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Self driving cars: T-Mobile and startup test 5G driverless car service