Urban transportation in the next few decades will shift worldwide towards electrification and automation, with the final aim of increasing energy efficiency and safety for passengers. Such a big change requires strong collaboration and efforts among public administration, research and stakeholders in developing, testing and promoting these technologies in the public transportation. Working in this direction, in the present work the impact of the introduction of driverless electric minibuses, for the first and last mile transportation, in the public service is studied. More specifically, this paper covers a state of the art in terms of technological background for automation, energy efficiency via electrification, and the current state of the legal framework in Europe with focus on the Baltic Sea Region.