Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology company May Mobility has started its first commercial driver-out autonomous transportation service in the city of Peachtree Corners, a suburb of Atlanta.

The company said it has transitioned its Peachtree Corners service to driverless operations, marking Michigan-based May Mobility’s third driverless deployment in the USA, following demonstration deployments in Sun City, Arizona, and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In partnership with Curiosity Lab, T-Mobile and the city of Peachtree Corners, May Mobility has been offering public rides in its autonomous Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS (mobility-as-a-service) to visitors of Peachtree Corner’s Curiosity Lab, one of the USA’s first smart city environments powered by real-world connected infrastructure and T-Mobile’s 5G, since September 2024 with safety drivers in place.

From this month, passengers can ride the service without anyone behind the wheel. The service zone includes eight pre-determined stops along Technology Parkway, at popular destinations such as hotels, restaurants, retail shops, office spaces, the Innovation Center at Curiosity Lab and Peachtree Corners City Hall.

“Peachtree Corners will be our third driverless operation, and we are excited to debut our first publicly available driverless service in the city of Peachtree Corners,” said Edwin Olson, CEO of May Mobility. “This launch reinforces the importance of working with cities and communities everywhere to solve real transportation challenges.”

May Mobility’s vehicles are equipped with its patented MPDM multi-policy decision making technology that leverages in-situ AI reasoning models to learn and adapt continuously to new, complex and even unpredictable driving conditions to create a safer, more comfortable ride. In doing so, MPDM solves the problem of adapting to unexpected, dynamic conditions or edge cases, and allows the company to scale quickly and efficiently to new environments.

“Curiosity Lab’s real-world smart city ecosystem has provided May Mobility with a unique environment to both continue to develop and improve their operations over the past six months, which has only further prepared the May Mobility team for its third driver-out operation and first commercial operation in the USA,” said Brian Johnson, Peachtree Corners city manager. “T-Mobile’s 5G is a key staple of our ecosystem and the driver-out transition, as it provides May Mobility with low latency, high bandwidth connectivity for a smoother rider experience and enhanced safety operations. This will continue to be important as we work towards expanding the route towards the town centre to provide additional means of transportation for city residents and visitors. It is incredible to see how the May Mobility team has been able to achieve driver-out operations within six months of the initial launch in our city, and we look forward to having our residents and visitors experience it for themselves.”

The driverless operations in Peachtree Corners are open to the public Monday to Friday from 9:30 to 15:00, with each vehicle accommodating up to five passengers at a time. Riders will be able to book trips to any of the service’s eight stops on-demand through an app, powered by transit tech company Via, available in the App Store and Google Play. The app promptly guides users on how to book a ride and access the vehicle, answers questions and more.

May Mobility is working with Peachtree Corners on future expansions and has plans to launch autonomous vehicles in metro Atlanta in partnership with Lyft later this year. Additional driverless operations in the USA will be announced throughout 2025.

May Mobility (www.maymobility.com) extended its portfolio of AV use cases with its announcement at CES in Las Vegas of a partnership with Tecnobus (tecnobus.it), a European electric minibus manufacturer, to introduce an AV minibus platform able to seat up to 30 passengers, including wheelchair accessibility.

Curiosity Lab (www.curiositylabptc.com) is a 5G-enabled intelligent mobility and smart city living laboratory located near Atlanta, Georgia. Designed as a proving ground for IoT, mobility and smart city emerging technologies, the centrepiece of the lab is a 4.8km autonomous vehicle lane leveraging cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technologies.

As the heart of what is being called Silicon Orchard in the metro-Atlanta region, Peachtree Corners (www.peachtreecornersga.gov) is a municipality that’s home to more than 45,000 residents, 45,000 jobs and an innovation hub that houses technology companies.