GM to Lyft Applicants: Baby, You Can Drive My Car

by Steph Willems

Published: March 15th, 2016

gm to lyft applicants baby you can drive my car

Old car? Can’t get a driving job? Not a problem.

If you’re looking to drive for the ride-sharing service Lyft in Chicago, General Motors wants to get you into a new Chevrolet Equinox.

Under its Express Drive program, Lyft drivers whose own cars don’t meet the company’s standards can finance an Equinox at a declining rate — starting at a maximum of $99/week — with insurance and maintenance included.

The program, which rolls out later this month in Chicago and will see Lyft drivers pay less for the Equinox the more passenger-carrying trips they make, is expected to be rolled out in other major U.S. cities — including Boston, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore — later this year.

GM said a large demand exists for new vehicles among Lyft drivers, with 60,000 applicants in Chicago alone unable to drive for the service due to the age of their own cars.

“Launching Express Drive is another way we treat drivers better, in addition to Power Driver Bonus, tips and same day payouts,” said Lyft president and co-founder John Zimmer in a statement. “We’re making sure everyone who wants to be a Lyft driver can be, by providing ultimate flexibility at incredible rates.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what General Motors planned to get out of the $500 million it invested in the San Francisco-based Lyft back in January, but the picture’s now becoming clearer. At the time, much of the talk revolved around a future autonomous service where no one drove anyone or anything. Until that vision comes to pass, GM seems pretty happy having regular humans pilot its Chevrolets.

GM president Dan Ammann has said Express Drive will use the mobility software developed for the company’s Maven car-sharing program.

#Chevrolet #ChevroletEquinox #GeneralMotors #GM #Lyft #Mobility #NewsletterArticles #Partnerships #Ride-sharing

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Whatnext on Mar 15, 2016

They'd be better off leasing a Jetta at VW's crazy low rates.

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APaGttH on Mar 15, 2016

Once again - if Toyota had announced this the Prius C or Prius Vthis would be hailed as genius. GM is doing it, they must be looking to shackle people in indentured servitude and looking for ways to lose money. Pay no attention to those profits, or how the other government bailout FCA is circling the drain.

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Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh A prelude is a bad idea. There is already Acura with all the weird sport trims. This will not make back it's R&D money.
Analoggrotto I don't see a red car here, how blazing stupid are you people?
Redapple2 Love the wheels
Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.