The two companies said the partnership, which involves one of GM’s largest investments in another company, stemmed from their shared view that autonomous vehicles will first reach consumers as part of a ride-sharing service, rather than vehicles owned by drivers.
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Ride-hailing application startup Lyft Inc. has received a $500 million investment from General Motors to build a fleet of driverless cars.
The deal would immediately make GM a “preferred provider” of short-term use vehicles available for rent to today’s Lyft drivers.
In the meantime, Lyft and GM are creating auto rental branches where people can grab vehicles for short periods of time, The Verge reports, which sounds a lot like Zip auto.
“We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless, and autonomous”, GM president Dan Ammann said. Additionally, GM is working on developing a class of self-driving cars that could operate out of these hubs as well. The company just completed a big $1 billion round of financing – but not almost as big as the billions Uber is raising at a valuation that may exceed $60 billion.
John Zimmer, president and co-founder of Lyft, said in a statement: “Working with GM, Lyft will continue to unlock new transportation experiences that bring positive change to our daily lives”.
Lyft has also been backed by investors like Alibaba, Didi Kuaidi, Tencent holdings, Rakuten etc. In September, Uber announced that it is funding $5.5 million to Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center to support a new faculty chair in robotics.
Lyft says it has the fastest-growing rideshare platform in the U.S. Each month, the company completes as much as 7 million rides across over 190 cities.
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The driverless or autonomously driven cars have been the focus point for many companies starting from Tesla, Uber to Ford with Google being the forbearer of the idea.
