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General Motors and Lyft are hooking up by way of a $500 million investment in Lyft, the other ride-hailing service. Together, they'll work on extending GM's autonomous driving project, already in development. The clan also means GM might have an inside track at selling GM vehicles to Lyft drivers.

Lyft says ane goal in working with GM — not that it's happening in 2016 — is for a driverless Lyft car to show up on the renter's doorstep (figuratively speaking) and remove the cost of having a driver (a la Lyft or Uber) or having a rental car delivered directly to you.

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Automakers move cautiously into car-hailing, rideshares

GM'south announcement Monday is role of a $1 billion round of funding that, along with previous investments past others, pegs Lyft's value at $5.5 billion. For comparison, Uber is valued at $65 billion. General Motors is valued at $53 billion. (Toyota, the world'southward largest automaker, is valued at $200 billion.) Near-term, in improver to possibly selling cars to Lyft drivers, GM and Lyft might set upwards pools of cars that Lyft drivers could rent if, say, they didn't actually own a car, or needed a bigger / different vehicle for their driving plans.

Ford is moving in a somewhat similar direction with Dynamic Shuttle Service, which sets up groups of a half-dozen or more riders in the same vicinity going in the same general direction, all of them riding in Ford Transit vans. Ford sees a marketplace for people who want something cheaper than a taxi, only more flexible than city buses and trains. Ford says information technology might run such a service, or it could lease the software to others running ride-sharing services. Lyft and Uber and in no danger right now; DSS is currently a pilot project of a one-half-dozen Transit vans on Ford's principal campus in Dearborn, MI.

It was unclear what Lyft volition provide to GM'due south self-driving car project other than as a possible outlet for cars when they're on the market. For Lyft, GM'south investment has clear value: The No. 2 car-hailing service in the The states gets needed capital to keep nipping at the heels of Uber and continue both of them striving to provide better services. Both too need friends in loftier places to evangelize their services — everyone you know knows about Uber and Lyft, but that isn't everybody — and in that location are still places where the services are needed just not e'er welcome, such as at airports picking up arriving passengers.