Autonomous Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS) provider May Mobility has raised $50m in a Series B financing round led by Toyota Motor.

Toyota Motor was joined by SPARX Group, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Cyrus Capital Partners, BMW iVentures and Toyota AI Ventures.

May Mobility will use the funds to hire engineering and operations professionals and expand its fleet to tackle increasing demand.

The latest funding takes the total capital raised by the firm to $84m.

The company intends to use autonomous technology to build a safer and greener society.

It plans to deploy autonomous shuttles to enable people to reach their intended destinations safely and easily.

At present, the company’s fleet of vehicles have facilitated more than 170,000 rides for public and private customers in Detroit and Grand Rapids in Michigan and Providence in Rhode Island.

The company aims to tackle different mobility requirements with the launch of a new product.

May Mobility president and CEO Edwin Olson said: “We are extremely excited to partner with Toyota and our other investors in this next phase of growth for our company.

“This round will help us accelerate our path to executing our vision, leveraging our best-in-class software stack and continuing to tap into the $28bn US first and last-mile transportation market.”

Last year, May Mobility partnered with global mobility technology company Magna to retrofit and expand its fleet of self-driving shuttles to prepare for entry into the US.

Under the partnership, Magna retrofitted low-speed self-driving micro transit electric vehicles from the chassis up.