GM China Introduces Carpooling Program, Amazingly Cheesy Photo
This picture is delicious, grade-A cheese
General Motors China has introduced a carpooling pilot program for its Shanghai employees that enables them to arrange rides together using a new self-developed mobile app, and also…would you get a load of that picture? It’s priceless. I particularly like how the caption says, “Go on a LOW CARBON DIET and get more for less,” subtly highlighting the writer’s clever pun by PUTTING IT IN ALL CAPS.
GM says the app will enable close to 700 employees at GM China’s Shanghai headquarters to carpool to work. It’s a move that should decrease the city’s considerable congestion and pollution, and– if the picture is to be believed–increase the workers’ merriment and laughter.
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Drivers punch in their preferred route, departure time, and number of available seats, while riders submit their commuter requests. The matching system then offers a list of potential drivers for riders to select. Then the driver has to accept the rider, after which good times and hilarity quickly ensue.
“The employee carpooling pilot program merges the Internet with intelligent mobile technology,” said Vivian Yu, the leader of GM China Urban Active Projects. “It will not only benefit our team members, but also enable us to test software systems in everyday usage scenarios.”
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“This initiative will further expand our activities in alternate transportation models in one of our most important markets in the world,” said GM Urban Active vice president Julia Steyn. “It will help us learn more about vehicle user behavior as we develop business models for future global mobility solutions.”
I don’t know where those three fun-loving GM China employees are going once they get off work, but I hope they take me with them.
Patrick Grieve was born in Southwestern Ohio and has lived there all of his life, with the exception of a few years spent getting a Creative Writing degree in Southeastern Ohio. He loves to take road trips, sometimes to places as distant as Northeastern or even Northwestern Ohio. Patrick also enjoys old movies, shopping at thrift stores, going to ballgames, writing about those things, and watching Law & Order reruns. He just watches the original series, though, none of the spin-offs. And also only the ones they made before Jerry Orbach died. Season five was really the peak, in his opinion. See more articles by Patrick.