Uber has built partnership with the GM’s Maven- a car sharing service

General Motors has become the short-term car leasing partner for the Uber drivers. General Motors is the investor for the Uber’s competitor in the ride-hailing services, Lyft.

Uber and Maven, a 10-month old car sharing division within the GM has built the partnership and announced the new pilot program in San Francisco, which will allow the Uber drivers to rent the car on the weekly basis for the work as well as the personal use. As per the 90-day test, drivers will rent their cars for $179 per week plus the taxes and the fees, which includes the unlimited miles and insurance.

The Uber drivers can choose any one between Cruze, Chevrolet, Trax and Malibu vehicles. This rental service of Uber is the latest leasing and rental programs in Uber, since the company started to offer their services to the drivers in 2013. Uber has also partnered with Enterprise and Hertz to provide the short-term rentals previous year.

General Motors has introduced the car sharing program, Maven, in the beginning of the year 2016. It is an alternative to the car ownership for its customers. Maven’s other services include, peer-to-peer car sharing and car rentals for the city dwellers. This new General Motor’s service is available in 10 U.S cities and the customers have driven more than 22 miles in these vehicles.

Along with Hertz, the General Motor also acts as the car provider for the Lyft’s Express Drive Car rental program. Similar to the Uber car rental test, the Express Drive Program of Lyft lets the drivers to rent the cars.

The relationship between the Lyft and GM are stronger. In January, GM invested $500 million in Lyft. And both the companies are working on the self-driving technology as the automobile industry is looking forward to make the self-driving cars ride on the roads.

The GM partnership with Uber interrogates about its relationship with Lyft. Whether it means that, GM is shifting its partnership?

Not at all, reply from three companies. It is similar to how the GM works with the Hertz and Maven on the Express Drive, as it is known that the vehicle access programs will have more partners. These works are not related to the Lyft’s work with GM on the autonomous driving project. GM is at the center of the companies’ relationship with one another.

The spokeswoman of GM didn’t mention about the company investment with Lyft differs from Uber, but she said that, the latest partnership Uber is not related to the investment with Lyft, the rival of Uber. It is the kind of partnership that GM has with other companies. The company will protect its partner’s data from other parties and companies.

The partnership with Uber is the kind of commercial undertaking of the company’s personal mobility brand Maven to provide flexible options for the Uber drivers to access the vehicles.

The spokesman of Uber also told about the concerns involved in partnering with both Uber and also the Lyft. He said that, GM is highly involved with Lyft and he also said that, Uber has been working with several car manufactures in the industry over the years.

Uber has been working with GM to provide discounts on the cars for its drivers with the help of the Uber’s vehicle solutions for some period.   

Maven a competitor for Zipcar

General Motors predicts that, about 30 million people will be using the car sharing service by the next decade, where users rent their vehicles at the hourly rate. With such intention the GM has launched its own car- sharing service called Maven.

At the beginning, this service was available only in Ann Arbor and Michigan, and the company said that, it will expand to other cities within a few months. The vehicles were available in 21 spots in the city, where they were rented for $6 per hour. There is no membership fee in Maven.

It is about making sure that, the service provided is completely seamless, connected, highly personalized, easy to use and easy way to travel from A to B.

Dan Ammann, the president of GM, said that, there are about 40 employees working in Maven, they were the former employees of Google, ZipCar and SideCar, the discontinued rail-hailing service and GM has recently acquired it.

Customer can use their smart phones to access the vehicle and they also have access to operate the heating and cooling systems. The vehicles will have the 4G LTE connectivity and they will be accessible to the Apple Carplay, Android Auto and SiriusXM.

Julia Steyn, the Vice President of GM said that, the goal was to make both the passenger and the customer feel comfortable with the vehicle and to feel like their own vehicle.

GM has been telegraphing its move over the months. In October 2015, the company announced the program called “let’s drive NYC”, with this the residents of the single apartment building in Manhattan received the car-sharing for three hours per month.

GM also invested $500 million in the Uber’s main competitor Lyft for the autonomous, on-demand vehicles. GM also plans to expand the Maven in the Chicago region and to increase the size of the let’s drive NYC program. These services will be available to 5000 residents in both the cities.

Once it was the unconventional move for the legacy automaker, but now these services started to improve. Before launching Maven, GM has acknowledged that, the raid-sharing and the car-sharing are becoming increasingly popular as the alternative to the car ownership. Ammann said that, the launch of Maven is to indicate GM’s intention to bring changes in transportation; it is another way to fight against them.

Car-share and raid-share are not the threat for the General Motors; instead they are the opportunity for the company.

The president of GM said that, the cars, which are owned by the person remains idle for most of the time, the ride and car-sharing was used most of the time, which creates the opportunity for the car makers like GM.

The opportunity is created by the conventional owner-driver model and it brings lots of change in driving.

The pricing of Maven is simple; it includes the fuel and the insurance charges. As Maven continues to grow, the team will implement the innovative methods to connect with the customers personally. Ann Arbor Maven users have the direct access to Maven leadership via the messaging application called, WhatsApp, they can use WhatsApp to express their feedbacks and ideas, which acts as the tool to shape the Maven service.

Types of services of Maven include residential, peer-to-peer and campus.

• Residential

In the first quarter of 2016, Maven has launched the car-sharing services for the Chicago residents, for this, it has made partnership with the Magellan Development Group. It has also expanded the car-sharing services in New York City also.

• Peer-to-peer

Initiatives of this service began with the peer-to-peer model. It started through the CarUnity marketplace in Germany. More than 10,000 people have signed up in Frankfurt and Berlin for the Maven car-sharing services.

• Campus

Various programs have been running on the GM campuses in the U.S. Germany and China planned to refine the Maven commercial offerings.

The president of Maven believes that, Maven is the key element for the strategy of the company to change the ownership models in the automotive industry.

 Author Bio :-

Anand Rajendran is CEO and Co-Founder of Zoplay, best PHP scripts development company located in India. Zoplay is a part of Casperon Technologies a leading social and mobile development company. I’m a Tech geek, Digital marketing expert, Entrepreneur, and Atheist who loves to write everything about PHP Scripts and mobile application development. Cabily script is a clone of Uber, which developed by the tech gigs of his company.