GM Teams Up With Lyft To Create Autonomous Ride-Sharing Service

Lyft’s current service of on-demand ride sharing created over 7 million rides a month during 2015 in more than 190 cities within the US, with the company grossing over $1 billion in revenue through October.

Limited details have been provided about the upcoming autonomous vehicle ride-sharing service.

This alliance between GM and Lyft includes several elements, including access to OnStar services and the creation of rental hubs nationwide featuring GM as a preferred provider of short-term use rental vehicles for Lyft drivers-thus allowing people to become drivers without using their personal vehicles. Barra went on to add that GM will “absolutely” design cars for a future era where human drivers are no longer the standard. In return, GM will hold a seat on Lyft’s board of directors.

John Zimmer, President and Co-Founder of Lyf, said, “Working with GM, Lyft will continue to unlock new transportation experiences that bring positive changes to our daily lives”. The partnership also better positions the automaker for a future in which customers don’t buy cars every five or six years but share rides or hail drivers when they need to get somewhere.

The partnership is expected to help create a network of cars that would operate themselves and be available on demand.

General Motors has invested $500 million in Lyft motors.

From General Motors’ perspective, part of that future involves self-driving cars. The plan to move into self-driving cars however, has been in the works at GM for some time. A spokeswoman for Lyft says it’s yet to be determined whether Lyft or GM will own the self-driving cars. Asian companies Rakuten, Alibaba and Didi Kuaidi were among the other investors that rounded out Lyft’s $1 billion fundraising campaign. That funding round would value Uber at $62.5 million.

In February, Lyft’s competitor Uber – valued at more than $60 billion – announced that it was partnering with Carnegie Mellon University on a Pittsburgh research lab that could lead to the development of driverless cars.

While it hasn’t made waves in Australia, Lyft is popular in the US.