On Maven*, GM's New Car-Share Service
One may need to be a Historian.
of things both modern and Victorian.
to understand what has happened to marriage.
as well as , recently, the Horseless Carriage
.
Whether or not this puts one in a mood for celebration.
Marriage has certainly been affected by Women's Liberation
and, as for autos, though I am not sure why--
having a car has become much more on the fly ,
for it now seems at least equally un- hip
to practice or even enjoy car ownership.
Instead, one can lease by the day, hour or week,
with so many different possibilities, it's hard to speak,
Including: Lyft, and Sidecar, both now part of GM's Maven*
as well as Uber, Daimler's Car2Go and more than 25 others.
The best known of which ---though not to me, previously--
to take one near or far
is suggestively called Zipcar.
Since this seems to imply a Culture of Transience
I hope you will not consider it an impertinence
if I ask:
Will we soon have Rent -A--Family for that special occasion
or else, annually sometime before April, for tax evasion?
HzL
1/21/16
*PS: I don't know how it got this naming,
and to pursue it here I'm skittish,
So I hope you'll agree, with me for claiming,
"Maven" means " an Expert " in Yiddish
https://maven.apache.org/what-is-maven.html
Maven, a Yiddish word meaning accumulator of knowledge, was originally started as an attempt to simplify the build processes in the Jakarta Turbine project.
https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi
Apache Maven 3.3.9 is the latest release and recommended version for all users. The currently selected download mirror is http://apache.arvixe.com/.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maven
A maven (also mavin) is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from Hebrew, meaning "one ...
General Motors is launching a car-sharing program. It's calledMaven, it's available in exactly ...
Source: General Motors
GM’s new car-sharing service, called Maven.
After more than 100 years of selling cars, General Motors is giving car-sharing a spin with a new service targeting the growing mobility-on-demand market.
Maven,
GM's new car-share operation, will begin renting vehicles by the hour or day within the next couple of weeks. The first market for Maven: Ann Arbor, Michigan.
"Today there are five or six million people globally using the sharing model for transportation and we see that growing four or five-fold between now and the end of the decade," said Dan Ammann, President of GM.
GM creating Maven is the latest in a series of recent moves by the country's largest automaker to position itself for the rapidly changing ways in which people are using cars and trucks
In early January GM took a stake in the ride-share firm Lyft. That came just weeks after the automaker quietly bought the assets of Sidecar, a San Francisco-based ride-share firm that shut down in December. Now, GM is accelerating its mobility-on-demand game plan.
How will Maven work?
In Ann Arbor, GM will offer a variety of models for rent by the hour or by the day. For example, Maven members can rent a small car such as the Chevy Spark for $6 an hour or $42 a day. The rate for a mid-size model such as the Chevy Malibu will be $8/hour or $56/day and large vehicles like the Chevy Tahoe will be $12/hour and $84/day.
After renting a particular vehicle, Maven customers will return it to one of 21 parking spots located around Ann Arbor.
As with other ride-share and car-share companies around the country, Maven customers will make reservations, open their car and coordinate payments entirely through a smart phone app.
"What we can offer the consumer is a completely personalized experience that means sharing (a car) that feels like yours," said Julia Steyn, GM vice president, Urban Mobility Programs.
While GM has moved quickly into the car-share business, it is not the first automaker to do so.
Daimler has
Car2Go which rents cars by the hour in a dozen North American cities including Los Angeles and New York.
All together, there are more than 25 car-share companies in the U.S. with Zipcar being the most well known.
Zipcar says it has more than 950,000 members who rent vehicles for short time periods in more than 30 cities and on 500 college campuses in North America and Europe.
Maven will also serve as the home for GM's other mobility-on-demand programs including residential car-share pilot projects in New York and Chicago, peer-to-peer car-sharing in Germany and car-share test programs on GM campuses around the world.
While it may be a start-up, Ammann believes Maven will eventually pay-off for GM both as a revenue stream and as a way to expand GM's brands to new markets and connect with customers they struggled to reach in the past.
"We see the emergence of car-share, ride-share as much more of an opportunity than a threat."
No comments:
Post a Comment