Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - April 2022 - 22

MaaS
"
Our 300,000 rides to date are more than half of the revenue-producing
autonomous rides across the entire industry.
"
May Mobility is expanding its autonomous fleet of Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS vehicles currently under test in Ann Arbor.
Bridgestone announced that it is taking a minority
investment in May - the tire giant's first stake in publicserving
AVs. The deal brings significant opportunities,
including Bridgestone service support for May's AV
fleet through its 2,200-store network. Additionally, May
Mobility will leverage Bridgestone predictive algorithm
technology for fleet maintenance and route planning.
Meantime, vehicle-level collaboration with Toyota
has increased, as May expands its fleet of AV-kitted
Sienna minivans being tested on Michigan public roads.
The Sienna base platform, extensively reconfigured with
Toyota's Vehicle Control Interface (VCI) plus May's
camera/lidar/radar sensor suite and software, will be
added to May's public shuttle operations in 2022, Olson
noted. The VCI allows the Sienna Autono-MaaS (S-AM)
prototype to interface with third-party autonomous
driving systems, including those from Aurora. The Sienna
heralds an AV that Toyota plans to deploy in late 2024.
" One of the great things about Toyota as a partner
is they're already talking about things they can incorporate
at the OEM level, into the Sienna platform, that can
provide benefits for the May service, " Olson said. " We
represent a 'living laboratory' in a way that no other
AV company can be. By our math, our 300,000 rides
to date are more than half of the revenue-producing
autonomous rides across the entire industry. There's an
opportunity for us to get that data and figure out what
changes we need to make a May Sienna different from
a personally owned Sienna, and how do we share that
with Toyota. Ours is a mutually beneficial relationship. "
Those dynamics helped lure senior program
manager Heather Konet from a job at Nissan to May
Mobility in 2021. " The technology is out there now,
serving people. It's not just a dream or a roadmap, "
Konet asserted. She is excited about various customerand
operator-focused technologies under discussion
for future deployment by May, including new
approaches to occupant monitoring (i.e., smoke, health
issues, rider disruptions) and vehicle-to-rider communication
via enhanced HMI.
Closer to 'AVO-free' operations
Technology in the AV space is changing rapidly, much of
it on the critical path. It's a challenge for the engineering
and design teams, Olson admitted. " We're constantly
reevaluating our bill of material and what sensors make
economic sense to use, " he explained. " There are sensor
configurations we could put on the vehicle that would
immediately expand the number of roads we could
operate on. But increasing the ODD [operational design
domain] might double the BOM price, and then you
don't have a business anymore. For now, the 905-nm
lidar is the way to go, for example. But do we like the
FMCW 1500-nanometer? Absolutely. But we'll give 'em
time for the price to come down. We're very pragmatic
about what's going to make the thing work. "
22 April 2022
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING
May Mobility

Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - April 2022

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