General Motors just took another major step forward in its drive to realize it vision of self-driving rental car fleets, to the tune of a $500 million. On January 4th, the ride-sharing company Lyft announced a $1 billion funding round, half of which was picked up by GM, creating a very strong partnership between the two.
This is all in hopes that, eventually, Lyft and GM will together create a web of autonomous vehicle fleets to challenge others that are working on autonomous cars (i.e. Google, Tesla, etc.) as well as other car-hailing apps (i.e. Uber).
“There’s software that powers the self driving car, software that connects the consumer, lots of different elements that we’ll plug in together and provide the ultimate experience.” Lyft President John Zimmer said to Forbes.
That sounds great, but based on all that is going on, GM and Lyft should probably hurry with their joint self-driving venture, as Ford and Google gear up for their own autonomous driving partnership, letting Ford skip ahead several steps in its own autonomous-driving program. Additionally, other car companies are clamoring to produce their own self-driving vehicles, with Nissan promising self-driving cars in the next 4 years, Kia revealing its own autonomous plans at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and Tesla rapidly improving its Autopilot system.
News Source: Forbes
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