Tech Disruptors May Mobility CEO Olson on Autonomous Driving
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Sep 18, 2025 Edwin Olson, Founder and CEO of May Mobility, discusses the company's innovative approach to autonomous driving and its recent robotaxi launch in Atlanta via a partnership with Lyft. He shares insights on riders' options for autonomous rides and why selected cities are crucial for scaling operations. Olson emphasizes May Mobility’s strategy of developing proprietary hardware and algorithms, aiming for a unique position in the market while addressing data collection, operational costs, and the importance of regulatory transparency.
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Early Driver-Out Deployments
- May Mobility has operated in three cities without safety drivers before launching with Lyft in Atlanta.
- Atlanta launch begins with standby operators to ease riders into autonomous rides.
Practical Level-4 Strategy
- May Mobility builds L4 systems limited by operating domain rather than pursuing full Level 5 autonomy.
- They use a LIDAR, radar, camera sensor suite like most AV firms to guarantee safety.
Reasoning Model Over Foundation Models
- May adds an on-vehicle reasoning model on top of learned models to handle novel situations.
- This reasoning improves performance outside training data compared with pure deep nets.