May Mobility picks Volkswagen ID. Buzz for its robotaxis and targets more than 10,000 vans by 2031

May Mobility will put its driverless system on the Volkswagen ID. Buzz and aims to deploy more than 10,000 of the electric vans as robotaxis through 2031, the Ann Arbor company said on Nov. 12. ECARX is integrating May Mobility's system into an AV-ready version of the van, U.S. road testing starts in early 2027, and the first production vehicles are due in 2028.

The announcement names the vehicle that ECARX left anonymous in May. Its framework deal with May Mobility then covered "up to thousands" of autonomy-enabled cars on "a third-party vehicle platform", with a total project value of about $750 million. Six months later the count is more than 10,000, but it is May Mobility's target, set by a company that agreed in September to go public through a merger with the blank-check firm ACP Holdings. Volkswagen is not quoted in the release and makes no volume commitment in it.

The partners bring the cost cut, not the volume

ECARX and Charlton Intelligence.ai, which has joined to help deploy the vans, will support a targeted all-in cost saving of 50% or more against May Mobility's current vehicle, the company says. ECARX is designing the central computer and the sensor suite, including lidar, radar and cameras.

"Scaling autonomous ride-hail depends heavily on the vehicle platform, and the Volkswagen ID. Buzz gives us one well suited for it," said Edwin Olson, May Mobility's chief executive.

The fleet behind the target is still small. May Mobility reports more than 600,000 commercial autonomous rides across 1.1 million miles in the U.S. and Japan, and three driver-out deployments. It operates commercially with Lyft in Atlanta and runs autonomous ride services in Eden Prairie and Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Its Uber launch in Arlington, Texas, was timed for "Q4 2026 or Q1 2027" in the September listing announcement. The new release says 2027.