US technology company May Mobility has announced plans to deploy more than 10,000 autonomous VW IDs. Buzz vehicles for robotaxi services worldwide until 2031. Volkswagen will technically adapt the electric van, which will then be equipped with the May Mobility autonomous driving system (Autonomous Driving Kit, ADK) from the London-based Chinese technology group ECARX. Another partner, German company Charlton Intelligence.ai, will support the delivery and deployment of vehicles.
Through this collaboration, May Mobility aims to reduce the total cost per vehicle by more than 50%. Development is already underway, with initial testing on U.S. public roads scheduled to begin in early 2027. The first production-ready vehicles will be delivered in 2028.
May Mobility operates as an asset-light provider. The company does not own or operate vehicle fleets, but instead supplies its AI-powered driving technology to third-party fleet operators and mobility platforms.
The system’s artificial intelligence software performs all calculations on the vehicle’s local onboard computers rather than offloading them to an external cloud. This allows the vehicle to respond with almost no delay and remain independent of a mobile network connection. Based on a predictive global model, the software simulates traffic situations up to ten seconds in advance and evaluates different driving maneuvers in real time.
“The expansion of autonomous transportation depends largely on the vehicle platform and the Volkswagen ID. Buzz offers us a very suitable one for this,” said Dr. Edwin Olson, CEO and founder of May Mobility. “We think passengers will love the ID. Buzz is powered by May Mobility’s autonomous driving system, and the vehicle will be based on economics that can scale with the robotaxi market.”
The company already has extensive experience in commercial operations, such as the collaboration between Lyft and May Mobility in Atlanta, and has completed more than 600,000 autonomous trips covering 1.1 million miles in the US and Japan.
maymobility.com
