GM Plans Maven Ridesharing Service

Burney Simpson

Auto OEMs may want the Young American, but many of the youth of America are choosing ridesharing and turning away from the driver’s license, the 20th Century’s symbol of the passage to maturity.

That demographic change, along with the rise of Uber, has led General Motors to invest in the ridesharing service Lyft and make plans to create Maven, its own transportation services firm, according to Bloomberg Business.

New research from the University of Michigan finds that 77 percent of 20-24 year-olds had driver’s licenses in 2014, down from the 92 percent in 1983.

The school’s Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) found that for 16-44 year olds there was a “continuous decrease in the percentage of persons with a driver’s license” from 1983 to 2014.

This month GM invested $500 million in Lyft, the ride-hailing app that was averaging about 2.5 million rides a month in early 2015, Motley Fool reports. In comparison, Uber was averaging about 30 million rides at the same time.

Lyft’s president predicted that his customers would one day be using the service to access a driverless GM car.

Now GM has bought Sidecar, a San Francisco-based ridesharing firm launched in 2012 that never caught on like Lyft and Uber.

GM is said to have purchased Sidecar for its software, inexpensive price, and several patents.  

The two deals follow GM’s application last November to trademark the word Maven as the name of an urban transportation services firm, Bloomberg reports.

The UMTRI study “Recent Decreases in the Proportion of Persons With a Driver’s License across All Age Groups” was written by Brandon Schoettle and Michael Sivak.

 (In 1974, David Bowie released Young Americans; in the early 60’s the Beach Boys released their ode to the auto Little Deuce Coupe).

Photo: Taxi, Taxi by Damian Morys, 2010.