This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

GM and Lyft are joining forces to test self-driving Chevrolet Commodities electric taxis within the next year. It's all part of the wrenching modify forced on automakers past demographics and quality control. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, a growing population may be owning fewer cars that last longer before they're scrapped, and urban dwellers increasingly cull ride-hailing services such as Lyft and Uber over taxis or car ownership.

This comes on the heels of GM's $500 million investment in Lyft at the first of the year, and then in March a $1 billion acquisition of Cruise Automation for its democratic driving engineering science. All of this proves, at least to the big automakers, that they're still in charge of the car business organisation. Put another way, traditional car-makers realize there's a chance they could be steamrollered by the likes of Tesla, Lyft, Uber, Apple and Alphabet (Google), and they need to adapt at warp speed.

GM President Dan Ammann (center) and Lyft co-founders Logan Green, John Zimmer.

GM President Dan Ammann (center) and Lyft co-founders Logan Green, John Zimmer.

The GM-Lyft deal

2015 Chevrolet Bolt EV Concept all electric vehicle – front exIn January, General Motors and Lyft announced "a long-term strategic alliance to create an integrated network of on-need autonomous vehicles in the U.S." because they see "the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless and autonomous," in the words of GM President Dan Amman.

This week, the broad commitment took on more specificity: Within the year, somewhere in the US, GM and Lyft will use cocky-driving versions of the Chevrolet Commodities EV (inset) to pick up and ferry passengers, co-ordinate to The Wall Street Journal. It's not immediately clear if there'd be no driver, which would represent a Level 4 cocky-driving car: Information technology doesn't require a commuter behind the wheel. Thus, it would be able to chauffeur your kids to school while the parents caput off to piece of work.

Automakers have been expected in the side by side year to deliver, on high-end cars, the first Level three vehicles. Those let a driver take his or her easily off the wheel and non pay attending to the car, just be ready to take control within, say, ten seconds. The all-time cars on the road today are Level 2, meaning cars with adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist, and they'll adapt to traffic period on limited access roads and continue the car centered in lane fifty-fifty around curves. But the driver's mitt e'er has to exist on the cycle, lightly.

That would exist a monumental jump forward if truly driverless self-driving happens any time before the terminate of the current decade, unless information technology's for limited driverless tasks such as shuttling passengers around an extended corporate campus. The GM alliance with Lyft and acquisition of Cruise Automation besides indicates the traditional United states-headquarter automakers are concerned that Alphabet's self-driving-car initiative is making headway. Just this week Alphabet/Google linked upward with Fiat Chrysler to install self-driving hardware and software in a armada of 100 new Chrysler Pacificas.

Lyft pink mustache

Four areas of GM-Lyft cooperation

In a statement, the companies declared they'll piece of work on these four areas:

  • Autonomous On-Need Network. The work together, using GM'due south "deep knowledge of autonomous engineering" (deep peculiarly since buying Silicon Valley histrion Cruise Automation) and Lyft'south platform for ride-sharing services.
  • Rental Hub. GM volition become "a preferred provider of short-term use vehicles" to Lyft drivers. (Notice the announcement said a, not the, preferred provider.) This plain means a Lyft driver could rent a GM vehicle if the day'south business calls for a larger SUV, or if the commuter'due south automobile is in the shop. Lyft already provides curt-term rentals of SUVs to Lyft drivers.
  • Connectivity. GM says Lyft drivers and customers will be able to access "GM's wide portfolio of cars and OnStar services." OnStar, founded in 1996, is now gaining customers as GM stepped back from harping on emergency crash notification (important but seldom used) to being an ever-on communications pipe including on-board Wi-Fi.
  • Articulation Mobility Offerings. The most cryptic of the four, the statement says the companies "will also provide each other'south customers with personalized mobility services and experiences through their respective channels." Beyond the power to hail a pocket-size, cheap Chevy Cruze one day and a GMC Yukon the adjacent, this part is somewhat opaque.

In Lyft, GM finds a market for Chevy Bolt

By partnering with Lyft, GM is also finding a client for its vehicles, in particular EVs. For all talk about the move to EVs, sales have been slow, peculiarly for automakers other than Tesla. It wouldn't hurt to have a ready customer for several thousand of the first Chevrolet Bolts. Final year there were 115,000 pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids sold in the United states of america — one for every 150 gasoline or diesel cars and SUVs.

Other sales figures for 2015: 25,202 for Tesla, 17,269 for Nissan Foliage, fifteen,393 for Chevrolet Volt (a PHEV), 11,024 for BMW i3 (the majority sold with a gasoline range-extender), and 9,750 for Ford Fusion Energi (a PHEV). The only other EV with more than v,000 sales was the Fiat 500e, 6,194 sales. Everyone else was below 5,000: VW e-Golf 4,232, Chevrolet Spark EV ii,629, Mercedes-Benz B-Grade ED 1,906, and Ford Focus Electric 1,582.

Sales of EVs and PHEVs volition pick up as their range increases and the price delta over combustion-engine-simply cars comes down. The new Chevrolet Volt plug-in, for instance, claims 53 miles on battery, and it'due south not hard to go 60 miles in urban/suburban driving. In recent weeks, several EV-makers announced or hinted that the new normal volition be EVs that claim 200-plus miles on battery power: Tesla Model 3, Chevrolet Bolt, the 2018 Nissan Leaf due in 2017, and a future Ford likely to be called the Ford Model E.