May Mobility has raised hundreds of millions from some of the biggest names in the auto industry, but if you haven’t heard of the autonomous vehicle startup yet, that’s apparently by design.
The Toyota and BMW-backed company makes autonomous vehicle systems such as Cruise and Waymo. However, it is dodging the fire those companies face by focusing on “multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts” with mid-sized cities, where it replaces “underperforming buses” with AV fleets, May Mobility’s Edwin Olson told TechCrunch.
“We’re not building 500 vehicles at once and dropping them off in San Francisco,” the CEO and co-founder said in a call. The company is growing more slowly than better-known audiovisual companies, but Olson maintains that May Mobility can “reach profitability much, much sooner and much more sensibly than the push for a Cruise or Waymo to reach profitability would be. simply because their consumption rate means they have to deploy so many cars,” Olson said.
May Mobility may have been onto something, but the company has also found a convenient framework for itself; A rapid expansion would require much more capital than the $300 million May Mobility has raised to date, including $105 million in new funding it announced this week.
So far, GM’s Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo have opted for a radical change. in cities like S.F. and The AngelsIts robotaxi launches have faced criticism from mayors, city council members, labor advocates, rideshare drivers, police officers and firefighters, some of whom argue that AV technology is not ready and threatens jobs. Cruise, in particular, is under scrutiny. The company stopped its driverless operations everywhereand the DMV and California Public Utilities Commission withdrew its driverless operating permits, after one of its autonomous vehicles dragged a pedestrian, who was hit for the first time by a human driver, 20 feet.
Quiet for now
May Mobility’s marketing strategy is to sell self-driving vehicles, specifically Toyota Sienna minivans with AV technology, on a “geofence, at the scale that they might operate (one or two bus routes),” Olson said. From the company B2B The business model allows it to remain relatively quiet, for now, because it sells to cities rather than individual passengers.
This “makes more sense today,” Olson said, citing the current limitations of driverless technology and vehicle costs. But May Mobility still wants to do some of the same things Cruise and Waymo do; It just doesn’t start there.
As AV technology advances and becomes cheaper, Olson said other segments will open up for the company, “whether it’s trucking, logistics or robotaxis.” That means the company will eventually attract the attention of robotaxi opponents, particularly on the labor side; For example, Teamsters union leaders argue that AV companies intend to eliminate truck and bus driver jobs after having made their case in private transportation.
Although it appears to be waiting in the wings, May Mobility is in expansion mode. The company recently announced deals in Ann Arbor, Michigan (home of May Mobility); Arlington, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; Grand Rapids, Minnesota; and Sun City, Arizona. The company said it will also arrive just east of San Francisco.”early 2024” in Contra Costa County. A May Mobility spokeswoman, Allie Potter, hinted that it will be heading to the Southeast “in the coming months” and that Californians can expect additional launches in the state in the future.
To get there, the audiovisual firm recently secured a $105 million Series D led by Japanese telecommunications giant NTT. May Mobility said Toyota Ventures, BMW i Ventures and State Farm Ventures also participated in the deal, among other investors. To date, the company has raised around $300 million.
