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Detroit was the birthplace of the automobile – now Southern Michigan is taking its turn at the (self-driving) wheel WORDS: EMILY MANTHEI
Who’s driving Miss Daisy?
A sporty white hybrid rolls to a stop on a busy street in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s a shuttle, low to the ground and seats six. New passengers hop in and the shuttle continues across a bridge into the heart of the city, making stops along a regular route that circles the densest blocks of old brick buildings and new condo construction projects. Passengers exit and others come onboard as the mini-bus continues its loop. There’s one unique feature to this vehicle, though: nobody is driving. Grand Rapids is Michigan’s secondlargest city, and like both urban and rural areas of the automobile state, it’s filled with cars. But with the race to develop automated vehicle technology, many of Michigan’s streets are becoming fertile testing ground for the future of mobility.
WASTING NO TIME The six-passenger shuttle in Grand Rapids is one of three test sites for an automated driving platform from the Ann Arbor-based startup May Mobility. The young company, founded in 2017, already operates similar shuttles for company employees traveling from a parking garage to their office buildings in Detroit, and from the train station in Providence, Rhode
A Ford Argo AI test vehicle drives through the downtown area in Detroit, Michigan. Volkswagen and Ford have put US$7 billion into their partnership to capture market share