GM, Lyft Driving Toward Driverless Car Future

The partnership will pair GM’s decades-long R&D devoted to autonomous vehicle technology with Lyft’s software for ride matching, navigation and payment.

Dan Ammann, GM President, sees the “future of personal mobility as connected, seamless and autonomous” and thinks this new deal will help implement this vision more rapidly. Automakers know that. That’s why Ford and Google are reportedly collaborating on self-driving cars, and why GM struck this deal. The other $500 million was from Saudi Prince Al-Waleed’s Kingdom Holding Company, Janus Capital Management, and previous investors Didi, Rakuten, and e-commerce giant Alibaba. This value is much smaller than Lyft’s rival Uber, which is valued at around $50 billion as of its own latest round of fundraising. The latter company is also now working on autonomous vehicle research. For comparison, Lyft operates in just 190 US cities, and just recently formed partnerships in China and India.

The two companies did not set out a timeline to get the on-demand network up and running, but said they would immediately offer Lyft drivers short-term rentals of GM cars.

The announcement comes as automakers and tech companies work increasingly closely to bridge the gap between cars and mobile technology.

In addition to jointly developing an on-demand vehicle network and multiple auto rental hubs, the two companies also plan to “provide each other’s customers with personalized mobility services and experiences through their respective channels”. F and Daimler AG DDAIF, who are both now working to develop ride-sharing services of their own. “Even for GM, $500 million is a lot of money, but investing in different business models are going to be an important part of our future”.

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The president of Lyft added that he is expecting the self-driving vehicles fleet to be tied to his company’s platform for ridesharing within the upcoming 10 years and likely even sooner.

Phil Harrold, automotive partner at PwC, said: “Across the patch we are seeing a realisation that the market is changing”.