Ann Arbor’s May Mobility today announced that Millennium New Horizons and Cyrus Capital Partners have joined its investor-base, co-leading a $22-million Series A round, with LG Technology Ventures and Thayer Ventures participating with return investors BMW i Ventures, Maven Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, and Y Combinator.
The round will help May Mobility expand its engineering and operations in order to meet growing demand for its self-driving micro transit electric vehicles, or shuttles.
“We, today, provide mobility services that are reliable and safe, on public roads, with a tech stack designed to operate now and ready to scale as the industry and customers are ready,” says Edwin Olson, CEO of May Mobility. “Our unique technology solves customers’ real-world transportation problems, and we are continuously collecting valuable technical data and market insights while generating revenue in the process.”
May Mobility focuses on the $28-billion U.S. last-mile transportation market for short trips in urban cores. Its commercial services operate on the streets of downtown Detroit (in partnership with Bedrock, the real estate company owned by Dan Gilbert) and Columbus, Ohio. The routes are in high-density areas, filling a critical need for customers and riders, but challenging for traditional autonomous vehicles.
In the coming months, May Mobility will be launching public services in Grand Rapids and Providence, R.I., with plans to announce additional commercial deployments in cities across the U.S. later this year.
Last June, May Mobility announced it had partnered with Magna, a large automotive supplier, to retrofit and scale up May Mobility’s fleet of self-driving vehicles. Magna is retrofitting low-speed self-driving micro transit electric vehicles from the chassis up.
The auto supplier works on the vehicles at its Troy-based custom build center, with May Mobility engineers collaborating on the development from its Ann Arbor headquarters. Over time, the two companies plan to produce hundreds, and eventually, thousands of shuttles as market demands increase. The work by Magna includes:
- Body modifications such as custom doors and a panoramic moonroof
- Drive-by-Wire Upfitting to convert the vehicles into an autonomous-ready state
- Sensor integration, including mounting, cabling, and streamlined cowlings
