General Motors (NYSE:GM) and ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. announced Monday that they would be expanding their short-term rental program to California and Colorado, building on the success that the two have had with one another thus far.
The rental program, called Express Drive, makes GM vehicles available to Lyft drivers along with insurance and maintenance. Currently the program is in use in Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., and Baltimore. The program expansion will include two electric vehicles as options in California with the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV and the extended-range electric Chevrolet Volt.
The partnership between GM and Lyft started back in January of this year, when GM said it would invest $500 million in Lyft and laid out plans to develop an on-demand network of self-driving cars together with Lyft. GM then acquired self-driving car startup Cruise Automation, and the three began to work together.
While Lyft is smaller than its rival Uber Technologies, both companies have been working, and spending, towards establishing position in a market for next-generation transportation and services that some project could be worth upwards of $1 trillion per year.
While no time table has been established for the rollout of self-driving or partially self-driving vehicles, Lyft President John Zimmer said that “technically, things are happening faster than people realized”. Zimmer seemed to suggest that the two companies would start with semi-autonomous vehicles, before moving towards fully-autonomous vehicles.
The expansion in California will happen this summer, and in Colorado it will begin in the fall. President of GM Dan Ammann said that there are waitlists everywhere for the program, under which cars are owned and leased by GM. General Motors saw shares of the company close 1.58% higher Monday.
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