The Chevrolet Bolt will be part of the new Express Drive program for Lyft drivers, starting this fall.
General Motors’ quest to expand the markets for its vehicles hit another milestone today as it announced it was expanding its Express Drive rental program available to Lyft drivers in California and Colorado.
The company said it will be offering the program, which offers Lyft drivers reduced rates on GM vehicles based on how many passengers they pick up each week. The deals will be offered in San Francisco later this summer while drivers in Los Angeles, California, and Denver, Colorado this fall.
Participants in the program can choose from a variety of vehicles, including the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, a pure electric vehicle it has said will have a range of more than 200 miles and is slated to go into production later this year, will be part of the program as well as the 2016 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.
A GM spokeswoman said Monday that more than 500 vehicles are active in Express Drive and thousands of drivers are on a waiting list.
GM and Lyft said that more than 130,000 people in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver markets have applied to become Lyft drivers, but did not meet qualifications for their vehicles.
(GM launches car-sharing service called Maven. For more, Click Here.)
GM and Lyft will begin Express Drive in new markets: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Denver.
“Expanding Express Drive provides opportunities to hundreds of thousands of new potential Lyft drivers and continues to make car ownership optional for both drivers and passengers” John Zimmer, Lyft’s president and co-founder, said in a statement. “We are also excited to be adding electric vehicles to Express Drive, which is an important milestone for Lyft and the industry.”
Currently the program is in place in Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C. and Baltimore, and done well. In fact, 30% of applicants in Chicago have requested an Express Drive vehicle. Boston’s program was fully subscribed in four days, the automaker noted.
GM President Dan Ammann said GM is pleased with the success of the program. “The Chevrolet Bolt EV and Volt are a perfect fit for ride sharing, offering very low operating costs and a wide range of connectivity features for both drivers and passengers,” he said in a statement.
Speaking Monday at a Fortune Magazine technology conference in Colorado, Ammann declined to say if GM would ever purchase Lyft.
(Click Here for details about GM’s acquisition of Sidecar.)
“The alliance has been significantly more successful than we originally anticipated,” he said, according to the Detroit News.
Just after New Year’s, GM announced it was investing $500 million into the ride-sharing company, which was in the midst of a $1 billion fund-raising campaign. At the time, the auto company said the deal was aimed at developing a fleet of self-driving ride-share vehicles.
GM and Lyft said the partnership would tap into GM’s work on developing autonomous vehicles and Lyft’s software that automates matching drivers and passengers, routing and payments to create a network of cars that would operate themselves and be available on demand.
Since then, GM added the now-defunct Sidecar ride-sharing company as well as kicking off Maven, a new car-sharing service. The new service is set to launch operations in three U.S. cities: New York, Chicago and the college community of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
(To see more about GM’s $500 million investment in Lyft, Click Here.)
It also will operate in Frankfurt and Berlin. That mirrors what Zipcar and other competitors have been doing, focusing on big cities and college towns where consumers are less likely to own a vehicle and more likely to seek out alternative mobility services.