(Source: MIRS.news, Published 07/29/2024) An automated, electric bus may soon be carting visitors around Sleeping Bear Dunes after an Ann Arbor company was awarded a $250,000 grant, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II and National Park officials announced Monday. 

The idea is that the shuttle will drive a seven-and-a-half mile circuit route around the dunes. Sleeping Bear Dunes U.S. National Park Superintendent Scott Tucker said the technology would be put "through the wringer." 

"We're going to put this in an almost closed circuit of chaos. A windy road, steep hills, steep inclines, wildlife, bears, deer, tourists. We're going to have every opportunity to see how technology can adapt to how visitors visit parks," Tucker said. 

He said he doesn't have safety concerns about the shuttle because it has been tested for the last two years in a city environment in Lansing. 

"We're going to have a challenge getting visitors watching around and sitting in their seat rather than watching how the bus is moving in that atmosphere," he said. 

The bus was among the three winners of the National Park Mobility Grant Challenge. The other two were: 

- Superior Watershed Partnership was given a $240,000 grant through the National Parks and Office of Future Mobility and Electrification for the deployment of community electric vehicle charging hubs near Pictured Rocks National Park and Keweenaw National Historical Park in the Upper Peninsula. 

- The Michigan Department of Natural Resources was given a $10,000 grant to help provide 19 off-road tracked wheelchairs that would make all parks more accessible.  

"The most in the USA," DNR Director M. Scott Bowen said. 

The National Parks Mobility Challenge was issued in August 2023 by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.