On a damp evening in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, just after a rainstorm, a white van drove up through an empty high school and performing arts center parking lot.
The van that picked me up, a Toyota Sienna, looks different from a regular Sienna. It has a cylinder mounted just above the windshield. Someone is in the drivers’ seat, but they aren’t actually driving. Instead, they are outfitted with a headset, ready to take over in case something goes wrong. To their left, a mobile device shows where the vehicle is going. It also plays the baseball charge tune every time the vehicle goes through an intersection. (Ann Arbor-based May Mobility, the company that operates the van, says this feature “denote[s] certain functionality during rides and represents a little bit of irreverence from our engineers.”)
The vehicle is one of five that comprises something unprecedented: it is part of the first autonomous shuttle service to operate in a rural community in the United States.
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