May Mobility, Inc., a leading autonomous vehicle (AV) technology company, today announced a strategic partnership with ITOCHU Corporation, one of the leading Japanese sogo shosha, to help accelerate driverless deployments globally over the coming years. Beginning with a collaboration with one of ITOCHU’s portfolios, BELLSYSTEM24, a customer experience and business process outsourcing solution provider, May Mobility will be able to quickly deploy thousands of driverless vehicles and support millions of riders with the AV company’s Tele-assist and Rider Support platforms.
As May Mobility launches additional driverless operations, its Tele-assist platform will continue to rely on the Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) driving technology’s reasoning models with minimal human intervention. Unlike companies that use tele-driving to control or completely take over an autonomous vehicle, May Mobility’s Tele-assist platform makes it possible for a remote monitor to easily guide and assist multiple vehicles, enhancing safe operations at scale.
The collaboration represents a first-of-its-kind in autonomous mobility, with May Mobility becoming the first AV company to partner with a global leader in business process and customer experience outsourcing. The partnership will leverage BELLSYSTEM24’s expertise in workflow optimizations to increase the efficiency of May Mobility’s Tele-assist process at an industry-leading cost, further cementing May’s path to becoming the first and most profitable player in the AV industry.
“When building a safe autonomy system, it makes no sense to replace the driver behind the wheel with another driver behind the curtain. We created a better way,” said Edwin Olson, CEO and founder of May Mobility. “Partnering with ITOCHU, we will take a highly efficient, safety-first approach as we ramp up the deployment of our driverless operations.”
BELLSYSTEM24 brings more than 40 years of customer support experience alongside a proprietary operation management system with state-of-the-art AI issue identification and resolution capabilities. Integrating May Mobility’s Tele-assist and Rider Support platforms directly into BELLSYSTEM24’s support platform will provide a custom solution that unlocks the future of AVs as May Mobility expands rapidly across the U.S. and Japan. The proposed collaboration will build upon May’s technical capabilities and provide additional levels of support and redundancy for customers and partners.
“We are very excited to expand the business by combining May’s advanced technical capabilities with our group solutions,” said Masato Horiuchi, COO, ICT Division of ITOCHU. “In addition to driverless operations from BELLSYSTEM24, we will promote this business collaboration by leveraging the comprehensive group strengths unique to a Japanese sogo shosha in areas such as geographical data and building IT infrastructure.”
Working with ITOCHU, May Mobility further solidifies its place as the pre-eminent Autonomy-as-a-Service company, building a network of best-in-class partners while focusing on optimizing MPDM for global deployment at mass scale.
In November 2024, May Mobility signed a multi-year agreement with Lyft to launch autonomous vehicles across multiple U.S. markets, starting in Atlanta this summer. May Mobility also announced its plans to deploy thousands of vehicles on the Uber platform over the next few years, with an initial launch planned for Arlington, Texas. The ITOCHU partnership will provide essential support to driverless operations as May Mobility quickly deploys thousands of autonomous vehicles across the US and abroad.
SOURCE: May Mobility
