Eleven companies are investing a total of $11 million in the second phase of industry funding for Mcity, the University of Michigan-led, public-private, research-and-development (R&D) initiative leading the transformation to connected and automated mobility.

As members of Mcity’s Leadership Circle, the companies are each committing a total of $1 million over three years to support Mcity and its programs.

The companies span such sectors as auto manufacturing, suppliers, information technology, insurance, telecommunications and data management. Together, they identify emerging opportunities as well as the barriers to realizing them, anticipate and help shape key standards and regulations and help guide the direction of Mcity-funded research.

Mcity is the only advanced mobility R&D center that combines early-stage research; testing in the state-of-the-art, real-world environment of the Mcity Test Facility; and on-road vehicle deployments to further prove new technologies.

To date, about $20 million has been invested in 40 research projects. The total investment in connected and automated vehicle research, development and deployment activities is expected to exceed $100 million by 2020, with funding from U-M, government agencies and industry.

New capabilities have recently been added to the Mcity Test Facility, including a Traffic Control Center with augmented reality testing capability, and connectivity between vehicles and the traffic infrastructure.

A small fleet of research vehicles based at Mcity includes a 15-passenger driverless shuttle and two open-source connected and automated vehicles, which are platforms to help U-M faculty and researchers speed technology innovation. Mcity also launched a driverless shuttle on U-M’s North Campus in June 2018 to study how passengers react to the driverless shuttles as a way to gauge consumer acceptance of the technology.