General Motors launches Maven, a car-sharing service

In October 2015, GM launched Let’s Drive NYC, a program to allow residents of a posh apartment building in NY access to vehicles for hire at an hourly rate.

Maven will roll out in phases, beginning this week in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it will focus on students, faculty, and staff at the University of Michigan. Customers download an app to their smartphones to locate, rent and access cars without a key. Expansions in the immediate future will make Maven available to motorists in Chicago and New York City.

(GM – Get Report) are rising by 1.8% to $29.95 early Thursday afternoon, as the company launched its car-sharing service Maven yesterday in Ann Arbor, MI and plans to grow it to an unspecified number of cities later this year. Of course, millions more are already using ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft.

Also this month, GM invested $500 million in ride-sharing service Lyft.

For some time now, we’ve been increasingly hearing news of conventional automakers joining hands with various ride-sharing facilities to expand their reach beyond just selling cars, in a proactive approach towards autonomous driving technology.

BMW AG operates its own car-sharing service, DriveNow, in nine European cities. “Each vehicle will provide an ownership-like experience with the convenience of car-sharing”. This week onward, Maven will expand its offerings in numerous cities and communities across the U.S. Services will be personalized according to regional customer needs.

GM executives said they expect their main business model of selling cars to people will continue to be large, but they also see big changes coming with ride- and car-sharing.

The latest evidence of this comes today (Jan. 21), with the launch of Maven, GM’s own car-sharing service.

“GM is at the forefront of redefining the future of personal mobility”, GM President Dan Ammann said in a statement. The app also allows remote functions like starting, heating or cooling, and others.

The service is recruiting customers and is in testing now, but should be open to the public in February, said Julia Steyn, GM vice president of urban mobility. GM’s dealers were not alerted of Maven ahead of yesterday’s announcement, although the automaker in October expressed its intention to enter alternative mobility business segments. Those are pretty competitive prices and work out to be considerably cheaper than from a auto rental service like Hertz.

“This is an area where we see significant growth”, Ammann says. Taken together, these moves mirror similar steps taken by other American automakers like Ford Motor Company to transform themselves from automakers into so-called “mobility companies” that will provide the transportation options of the future, whatever form they may take.