USDOT designation puts Willow Run automated vehicle test grounds in national network

A recent designation as one of the first national proving grounds for automated vehicles should help Ypsilanti Township's American Center for Mobility (ACM) generate even more interest from potential clients and confidence from stakeholders.

The ACM was one of 10 facilities nationwide to be accepted into the United States Department of Transportation's (USDOT) Automated Vehicle Proving Grounds Pilot program last week. The facilities, selected from a pool of 60 applicants, will work to develop and share best practices in what USDOT refers to as a "community of practice."

Set to open by the end of this year, the over 300-acre ACM site is a testing grounds for connected and automated vehicles (CAV), being built on the former site of the Willow Run powertrain plant in Ypsilanti Township.

ACM chief operating officer John Maddox says the USDOT designation ensures that ACM "will always be at that cutting edge, that we'll have the latest, and that the facilities that we design here could very well become the national standard and even the international standard."

Maddox says the designation also speaks to the U.S. government's commitment to the country leading the way in CAV technology globally.

"There's a lot of work to do to validate these connected and automated technologies, and it's not a simple task necessarily," he says. "It's going to take a fair amount of collaboration, expertise, and a fair amount of innovation."

In addition to vehicles, the site is also being designed to test and develop related technologies, such as traffic control devices that communicate with each other and with cars, as well as the communication systems they will use. Maddox says the center's "purpose-built" approach and close proximity to auto industry leaders help set it apart from other facilities and make it possible to become a leader in the space.

"We expect to see continued and even expanding interest [from] companies that want to locate here and be close to this site, so their engineers, their technicians, even their lawyers and product managers, can utilize the site to really speed their product market," Maddox says.

Eric Gallippo is an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer.