Over the past year, Ottopia has worked to build awareness of the value of Remote Driving as a Service (RDaaS) - integrated with consumer vehicles coming off the production line.  

In that time, we have started engagements with major OEMs. Additionally, we have continued to study the market with both B2B and B2C research. All told, we are even more convinced than we were heading into CES 2024 that remote driving is the next luxury service for premium car owners. 

In the post, we take a look back at some of the major milestones along the way. 

January 2024 - CES 2024: Ottopia demonstrates remote driving 

Visitors at our CES demo watched as a driver in Las Vegas drove a car in Tel Aviv. For many visitors, this was the first time they saw smooth remote driving of a car - not to mention with low latency and high reliability from halfway around the world! 

April 2024 - Frost & Sullivan Recognition

In selecting Ottopia as the Global Market Leader of Automotive Teleoperation for the second time, Frost & Sullivan not only recognized Ottopia: they embraced the potential of Remote Driving as a Service to become an entirely new market category: “For consumers seeking luxury, comfort, and time-saving, the company’s teleoperation platform enable a new type of “on demand, personal remote driver” service that can take on driving tasks such as driving in heavy traffic, parking spot searching and management, refueling/recharging, periodic check-ups, repairs, and cleaning, all done by remote human drivers.”

June 2024 - General Availability Announcement at Startup Autobahn 

At Startup Autobahn, we first revealed general availability of our Remote Chauffeur Platform, with details about the full end to end solution and how vehicle integration works in serial production. 

In our General Availability announcement, we revealed multiple breakthroughs:

• New core networking and streaming technology thoroughly tested to work with only two modems, and reducing the data throughput - and therefore cellular costs - by over 30%. 
• New technology that improves system resiliency over unreliable public cellular networks. This technology includes new algorithms for sensing and prediction network conditions, and adjusting packet distribution and forward error correction in real time on the fly. 
• A full portfolio of products for deployment, from the consumer app to the on-vehicle pipeline to the remote driver station to the shift and fleet manager. 
• New APIs designed for easier integration at all levels - streaming, control, driving interface, app, and fleet management.    

With these improvements in hand, we also launched an OEM Acceleration Program in which we work with an OEM to quickly deploy a pilot on a real vehicle and integrate a set of our capabilities with OEM systems. From this point on, market engagement and public recognition accelerated. Several OEMs have participated in our OEM Acceleration Program.

June to August 2024: Press Pick Up The Story

The concept of a Remote Chauffeur resonates with people, and journalists started to pick it up. We enjoyed the market projections and Ottopia profiles in Forbes, Motor Trend, and Yediot Aharonot, amongst others. We also saw growth in inbound interest, with a variety of companies looking to adopt remote driving. 

September 2024: McKinsey Studies Remote Driving

McKinsey just recently threw its hat in the remote driving ring. Through an extensive consumer survey, McKinsey discovered just how attractive remote driving really is. In addition to high willingness to pay - over $62 an hour for premium car owners - over 60% of all consumers surveyed would consider switching car brands to get remote driving. McKinsey recognizing the market and showing this level of consumer interest gave remote driving an energy boost. 

October 2024: Ottopia Remote Chauffeur Platform Wins the Paris Motor Show Startup Competition

Ottopia was recognized by the judging panel - including representatives from Stellantis, Renault, and BMW - as offering the #1 Innovative Service Offer. With this recognition, we will bring the Remote Chauffeur Platform to the enormous audience at the Paris Motor Show. 

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On Deck: Bringing the Remote Chauffeur Platform To Market At Scale

Bringing new automotive innovation to market takes time, especially when safety is at stake. For the past year, we have been working with several OEM partners to define how, when and where to launch remote driving. Keep an eye out for upcoming announcements!

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Reach out to Ottopia to join the ride and launch the Remote Chauffeur Platform with your vehicles: info@ottopia.tech