Your future autonomous ride could be aboard a bus — step inside and you won’t find a driver in sight. May Mobility, which develops self-driving technology, is partnering with European electric minibus manufacturer Tecnobus to build an autonomous vehicle that’ll seat up to 30 passengers, the companies announced at CES on Tuesday. The planned minibus will also be wheelchair-accessible and can go up to 45 mph.
May Mobility says this collaboration will allow it to scale and diversify its fleets for everything from urban and airport transit to corporate campus transportation. It’ll also allow the company to expand the reach of its self-driving technology into Europe and Canada, where the buses are currently approved for use.
The move toward developing autonomous buses could help address rising concerns about congestion in cities, especially as robotaxis increasingly join the throngs of vehicles already on roads. Critics have noted that autonomous vehicles will likely worsen traffic by roaming downtown areas as they wait for their next pickup. The way May Mobility sees it, having a set of smaller public transit vehicles will enable cities to deploy more buses they can actually fill — without shelling out more money for additional drivers, which would otherwise make the endeavor cost-prohibitive.