Michigan: Shift From Motor City to Transit State

Michigan is truly a leader in the development of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Long known as the state where Detroit, the Motor City, is located - a city with a reputation as a transit desert - a reputation that is beginning to turn around, this was the quintessential state devoted to the motor vehicle. Michigan is changing.

The automobile companies stopped singing the tune a few years ago that drivers will never give up the wheel or their personal vehicles, and that AVs would be decades away. Since then big auto has invested billions in AVs and planning for shared-use transportation services. The Hill reports that total AV investment now exceeds $80 billion and that is only a conservative estimate that for the past three years, with investment growing. This news relies on a Brookings Institution report entitled Gauging Investment in Self-Driving Cars. The report is on my to-read list.

Image from Detroit News.

Universities jump on board

But research and development is not the only area where Michigan is a leader. Recently, Michigan has become a leader in AV pilots. First, the University of Michigan added an AV shuttle this academic year on its North Campus. (This blog covered the pilot news in posts during June and August.) The shuttles arrive every 10 minutes.

More Michigan universities are working on AV development. "Lawrence Tech’s vehicle is known as ACTor, or Autonomous Campus Transport/Taxi, and is expected to be functioning on campus by August."

BUT

The Lawrence Tech vehicle, which is homegrown, created at the college, will NOT be an AV. The vehicle will be, at least to start, only partially autonomous. Still, this will add more Michigan competition and it is likely only a matter of time before a true AV shows up shuttling passengers around the Lawrence Tech campus.

Across the Pond in another university town

Image from Business Weekly UK.

Four-passenger autonomous shuttle pods, called PodZero, are operating in Cambridge, England, as part of RDM Group's effort to "deliver the data, information and experience required to get the fleet of larger, 10-seater autonomous buses on the busway a reality sooner rather than later.” England has long been planning and testing AVs. This Cambridge AV PodZero is operating on a guided busway; plans are already in the works to expand to other locations and to larger transit AVs.