
G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft - gk1
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/technology/gm-invests-in-lyft.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=wide&state=standard&contentPlacement=1&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F01%2F05%2Ftechnology%2Fgm-invests-in-lyft.html
======
JumpCrisscross
It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles
by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this:

FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car
that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school.

SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers
around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's owners collect a fee from Uber,
Lyft et al.

THIRD, economies of scale and changes in perceptions towards the utility
versus cost of owning cars causes people to stop buying them. Instead, they
subscribe for access to a fleet–such as Uber or Tesla's. (Note: people already
do this in cities like New York, where car ownership is relatively scarce.)

AND FINALLY, as distributed car ownership falls, retail locations for their
maintenance go out of business. Barring massive public subsidy for car
ownership, this creates a feedback loop that increases the cost of individual
car ownership until it becomes a luxury.

1 will happen later than we expect. 2 will happen sooner, 3 much later and 4
drastically sooner. In fact, I think it will ultimately be 4, not 3, that
drives a rapid, self-perpetuating dominance of self-driving cars within our
lifetime.

[1]
[http://sustainablemobility.ei.columbia.edu/files/2012/12/Tra...](http://sustainablemobility.ei.columbia.edu/files/2012/12/Transforming-
Personal-Mobility-Jan-27-20132.pdf)

~~~
Merad
Sorry, I think this is just totally disconnected from the reality of the
average American who lives outside of a major urban center.

1\. Mom, dad, and kid all need to go to work/school at roughly the same time.
If they all have a 15-20 minute commute (well below average for many areas)
and the destinations for all three aren't in the same immediate vicinity,
we're right back to the family needing 2-3 cars.

2\. Eh, no. Go to the mall or a shopping center parking lot and walk around
looking in people's cars. The average person's car is somewhere between messy
and a pigsty. IMO, this will only get worse with SDCs, since people will be
able to do more eating/dressing/preparing/relaxing in their car without the
need to drive. Not to mention the number of people who simply don't want
random strangers using their car. Uber or Lyft would have to offer a
_significant_ fee before I would even consider it.

3\. Vehicle owners are used to convenience. If I live in 20 minutes outside
the city, then I probably have to wait 20-30 minutes for a ride to arrive
before I even start my trip. Massively inconvenient, and not worth it.

SDCs will definitely lead to change in American society, but I have to wonder
if it won't completely backfire on some of these expectations, and actually
lead to American society sprawling out even more into the suburban and rural
areas. WFH is becoming a viable option for more and more jobs, and longer
commutes will be much more acceptable to most people when the time in their
car isn't simply lost time.

~~~
stcredzero
_The average person 's car is somewhere between messy and a pigsty._

Give people an economic incentive for keeping a neat car, then you're going to
see neat cars. This is clearly true for the current Uber and Lyft fleets.

~~~
jmspring
"Current uber and Lyft fleets" \-- they made a conscious economic decision.
Maybe think about reality of life, a commute, family, etc.

A friend with an incredibly smart 7 year old still has a messy car. Her
daughter, despite the ability to read and understand things well above her
age, is a 7 year old. The car is a mess.

When it comes to these pie in the sky utopian scenarios, I wish people on HN
would step outside and actual observe every day people.

~~~
Ntrails
>Her daughter, despite the ability to read and understand things well above
her age, is a 7 year old. The car is a mess.

Right, and that's a choice. It has nothing to do with "she's a 7 year old" and
everything to do with "she's allowed to make a mess in the car".

I was never allowed to eat in the car beyond the odd sweet, and I wouldn't
have thrown wrappers or anything else on the floor on pain of death... I find
it mind boggling that the child is blamed for the state of the car, when
realistically it is just a parenting choice. There are 7 year olds with
exceptional table manners even in this modern day, and there are 7 year olds
I'm embarrassed to eat at the same table as.

I'm fine with people choosing to have messy cars (mine oscillates between
spotless and a dump over ~3 month periods) - but it's a choice and other
choices can be made.

~~~
jmspring
The point being here, there is "it would be nice", "some fit the model where
this would work", and "there are a lot of cases where this won't work". Or
even more fundamental things when talking about little ones like things like
car seats.

Maybe it is "choice", but there are a lot of people out there where the
"choice" around their vehicle is closer to that of it is lived in, may have
books and papers, clothing, toys, etc. (maybe food as well) that will not
conform to this scenario.

Walk through a grocery store parking lot sometime and observe the state of
vehicles as people get in/out, etc. my bet is on a sufficiently large pool
would be in the condition where utopian sharing doesn't make sense.

That said, if there was a mind shift because of an overall benefit, it could
happen. But, that is a long way off.

------
peter303
GM had and still has an impressive technical research center. Its just that
establishment big companies dont get the respect that startup companies do.
Nor can the employees win big like in a startup IPO.

General Electric is currently running a humorous TV commercial about this. A
hipster engineers friends throw him a "new job party". But they go slackjaw
when they discover he joinged GE instead of Facebook. GE has the oldest R&D
lab in the country, started by Thomas Edison.

~~~
ljk
the ad -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvfU1NpCJQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvfU1NpCJQQ)

------
tbrock
I'm glad we bailed them out so they could wildly speculate on tech startups.

~~~
tomasien
The bailout was massively profitable for the government and every penny has
been repaid. Investing in innovation is exactly what a company like GM should
be doing and our tax dollars are in no way involved in this.

Edit: didn't make money on GM [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-
treasury-idUSBREA...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury-
idUSBREA3T0MR20140430) Made lots of money overall:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/business/us-signals-end-
of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/business/us-signals-end-of-bailouts-
of-automakers-and-wall-street.html?_r=0)

~~~
mangeletti
This is entirely untrue, pertaining GM. We tax payers lost tremendous money on
GM[1], and then GM restructured (think "good bank bad bank"[2] style nonsense)
in a clever way to ensure that we would never reap the benefits of the future
success of "GM".

1\. [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury-
idUSBREA...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury-
idUSBREA3T0MR20140430)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_bank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_bank)

~~~
tomasien
Good point! Very good point - I still think investing in innovation is the
only thing that makes sense for GM, the reason the auto bailout worked out is
because Ford*, for example, did and is crushing it.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/business/us-signals-end-
of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/business/us-signals-end-of-bailouts-
of-automakers-and-wall-street.html?_r=0)

Edit: Ford did not take bailout money so that logically does not hold like I
thought it did. Point about innovating still holds fine.

~~~
j2bax
I was under the impression that Ford was the only one that didn't take a
bailout.

~~~
wavefunction
You are correct.

~~~
cgy1
IIRC Ford actually got very lucky in that they were actually in huge trouble
before the market crash and decided to mortgage the company right before the
credit market seized up. So that was really why they didn't need to take the
bailout.

~~~
georgeecollins
I would argue they were also better run than GM during this period.

------
pbnjay
So Google+Ford, Lyft+GM, Tesla on both sides software/hardware... Where is
Uber's Hardware going to come from now?

I wonder if this is an instance where the personalities involved with Uber are
having a detrimental effect on these sorts of long-term needs. Or is there
something yet to be announced?

~~~
asafira
Didn't Uber buy the Carnegie Mellon robotics division? Is it too much to think
they might try for their own hardware platform?

It might be, but why else do so?

~~~
sjm-lbm
They will still need a chassis/engine before they have a viable car, and
there's been no real external indication of them either developing that in
house or partnering with/purchasing someone that can provide that expertise.

.. at least I think that's what the question is about.

~~~
woody223
Uber planned to buy 2,500 driverless cars from Google (GX3200, investment of
$375m), announced back in 2013 [1]

[1]
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/uberauto/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/uberauto/)

~~~
eco
Look at the publication date. I'm not sure what TechCrunch was trying to
accomplish doing that. It wasn't even the right day of the year for something
like this.

Edit: Apparently the point was to test what rebloggers would believe:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/27/uber_goog...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/27/uber_google_and_driverless_cars_fake_techcrunch_story_widely_reported_as.html)

------
jmsdnns
GM's current mktcap is about $53B. A $500m investment represents putting
almost 1% of their company into Lyft. Tesla's mktcap is about half of GM's, so
this investment represents 2% of Tesla. Uber's last valuation put them above
both GM and Ford, so what GM is looking at is a Lyft competitor "worth" more
than they are and they want in.

I don't really care about talk of tech bubbles, but seeing older institutions
invest so aggressively in startups is gnarly. Both Fidelity and Blackrock went
into Uber and now GM owns a huge piece of Lyft.

I don't really have a point. Just thinking out loud because I'm not sure what
to think...

------
justinv
"GM and Lyft said they will work together to develop a network of self-driving
cars that riders can call up on-demand."

Pretty interesting. Especially considering Ford has been linked to working
with Google on developing self-driving cars. [0] Though, it seems the Ford
family is also involved with investing in Lyft.

[0] [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-talks-google-build-
self-0...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-talks-google-build-
self-040522897.html)

------
danans
My theory is that with the ever increasing reliability of cars, they aren't
being replaced as often due to low utilization (sitting idle most of the day).
Having a more highly utilized fleet of vehicles will mean they get replaced
more often.

This isn't a big vehicle sales growth strategy, but it could be a way to
preserve vehicle sales, while keeping a foot in the door of the future. They
might even be able to get away with spending less to manufacture these cars,
since people don't care as much about finish quality in something they don't
own.

Also, the interiors of the vehicles would probably degrade faster than the
mechanical and electrical systems, so GM could probably make a business in
remanufacturing and certifying such vehicles for return to service, or putting
them into cheaper tiers of service.

Essentially, that would be the partial transformation of GM into a large fleet
management/maintenance company.

EDIT: wording

~~~
twistedpair
Correct. If my car drives me to work, then drives other people around all day,
it will rack up miles far faster than before. Now, instead of driving 12K mi
per year, it can rack up 60K mi per year. I'll need a new car every 3 years.

Luckily, it can also schedule maintenance and drive itself to the dealer too.

------
cpwright
"G.M. will also work with Lyft to set up a series of short-term car rental
hubs across the United States, places where people who do not own cars can
pick up a vehicle and drive for Lyft to earn money. Daniel Ammann, president
of G.M., will join Lyft’s board of directors."

This reminds me very much of the taxi model; where the driver is going to
start the shift in the hole and has to work their way out of it.

~~~
tommoor
Maybe they could paint them in a special livery so that you could tell it's a
Lyft from a distance ;)

~~~
blhack
I know that you and parent are joking about lyft being just another taxi
service, but would that really hurt them?

Lyft and Uber win because of the ability to rate their drivers, ease of
payment (imho Uber wins this much more than lyft), and the fact that
everything about your trip is tracked.

You get into a regular taxi, and who knows who is going to be behind the
wheel, what state the car is going to be in, what sorts of payment they'll
agree to take, etc.

Uber and Lyft took all of that nonsense out of the transaction. _THAT_ is why
they're winning (that, and cost), not because of what their cars look like.

------
cmpaul
The "short-term car rental hubs... where people who do not own cars can pick
up a vehicle and drive for Lyft to earn money" is a nice idea in the short-
term. I still think Uber has the right idea long-term with a completely
autonomous fleet, but once those hit the market, there will still be a pretty
large demand for NON-autonomous vehicles -- take my parents, for instance, who
refuse to get into a car not driven by a human.

~~~
lighthazard
Your parents will be irrelevant in 2 or 3 generations from now. At some point,
fully autonomous will be a norm without the fear.

~~~
Qworg
2-3 generations is a long time to make money.

~~~
simonh
Tell that to Jeff Bezos.

------
ForHackernews
I don't know whether this is a real difference or not, but Lyft "feels" like a
much nicer company than Uber. I'm not thrilled about Lyft's rampant hipster-
branding, but Uber seems like a company run by pricks.

Maybe it's just because they're the underdog, but I'm really rooting for Lyft.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
When I was in Colorado Springs, Lyft was much more available than Uber so I
used it for the first time after only having ever used Uber for the past year.

The major thing I found different was the driver wanted me to sit in the front
and was much more enthusiastic about conversation. It wasn't bad but it was
definitely different and somewhat offputting. Not sure if that was just a
single event, but I wonder if each company encourages those differences in
driver interaction.

~~~
bnj
Sounds like a Colorado Springs effect. Here in NYC I've used both fairly
evenly and (unsurprisingly) the experiences are fairly similar and in line
with the typical "uber" style of sitting in the back and not talking unless
you choose to reach out...

~~~
omm
From my experience in NYC many drivers drive for both Uber and Lyft. In an
anecdotal poll I ran with those drivers, they say Uber riders usually like to
be left alone while Lyft riders are more chatty.

------
j0e1
“From a G.M. perspective, we view this as much more of an opportunity than a
threat” - G.M President

Something you don't hear big corps talk so about start-ups very often. It's
promising.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I can't see the opportunity for them, on the other hand I can see the threat,
if autonomous cars become ubiquitous then why would you bother owning your
own?

Also if rental becomes the dominant model then customers aren't going to worry
so much about those expensive extras where car manufacturers make their
profits.

~~~
MajorLOL
>autonomous cars become ubiquitous then why would you bother owning your own?

Anything requiring a truck (60% of new vehicle sales) will not be something
that you use as a automated vehicle that is for rent. You really are ok with
ordering up a driverless car that I will take off-road and load up with scrap
materials from a house remodel and send off, driverless down the road with my
trash hanging out the back?

I really love the idea of driverless cars and I can see the stars in the tech
worlds eyes. Be realistic about what your average American does with a vehicle
though - it's not a daily commute up and down sandhill road to sit in a nice
office.

~~~
danans
Why would the autonomous vehicle I rent for a commute ever be the same one you
use to load up with refuse from your home remodel?

Wouldn't it make way more sense for you to rent (or own) a pickup truck and
for me to rent an autonomous passenger vehicle?

Setting autonomous vehicles aside, current short-term car rental companies
(i.e Zipcar) have requirements on the condition you return a passenger vehicle
in, vs a cargo/hauling vehicle.

I've rented a Zipcar pickup truck to haul a load of concrete pavers, but I
wouldn't try to do the same in one of their regular passenger vehicles.

There should be a sufficiently large market for both use cases that there
should be limited sharing of vehicles between them.

~~~
MajorLOL
Imagine if you owned 10 rental properties, were a plumber, an electrician, a
basketball coach or had almost any job other than something in the tech
industry. You would use your truck/van/large SUV for hauling trash, wire,
sports equipment, etc.

You would laugh at the idea of selling your primary transport and using an
uber/lyft every day to transport all your equipment. Every time one shows up
or drops off, remove and replace all your tools/gear. The wear and tear on
these vehicles is greater than a small commuter.

Just because you rented a truck once to move gardening supplies makes you
anomalous. Most people who want to do that kind of work/hobby own a vehicle
that allows them to transport these things with ease.

We haven't even gotten into the aspect of children. Imagine remove/replace
every day on a child car seat from a rental.

~~~
danans
Most people I know who work in the trades own the vehicle as part of their
business, and have separate passenger car(s) for hauling family.

The vehicle subscription would replace the passenger car, not the truck used
for heavy work, not at the least because the depreciation of the work vehicle
is deductible as a business expense. Also, a vehicle actively used for
construction work is already heavily utilized (it is hauling/holding stuff
most of the day), so it makes more sense to own it. Passenger cars, however,
sit idle most of the day in a parking lot or your driveway, hence their low
utilization / wasted value.

Also, many cars today have built-in car-seats
([https://www.cars.com/articles/2014/05/which-vehicles-
offer-i...](https://www.cars.com/articles/2014/05/which-vehicles-offer-
integrated-booster-seats/)). You can bet this sort of feature will be more
common in autonomous vehicles.

Furthermore, in certain Uber markets today, you can pay an extra fee to get a
vehicle with car seats pre-installed. Right now that fee is high ($10/ride)
because they're the only ones doing it, but it's a service so easily
replicated that the price will surely come down.

~~~
MajorLOL
If 60% of the fleet is trucks and trucks are rarely purchased for explicitly
moving humans and instead purchased for the moving of things.

Rideshare already only has 40% of the market to convince to sell their car and
perpetually rent on demand. What's the conversion rate of that 40% who could
use the on demand service for moving humans? 50%? That's not a massive pile of
customers.

Built in car-seats are almost a mirage, they are wildly uncommon. The premise
still remains, overwhelming majority of people will not want to abandon a
personally owned vehicle for some on-demand car that arrives and some varying
condition and layout that you have to load/unload every time with your things.

Try it for a week if you drive, take your car
charger/paperwork/sunglasses/whatever in and out of the car every time you
park. That alone will sell you on private ownership.

~~~
danans
> Rideshare already only has 40% of the market to convince to sell their car
> and perpetually rent on demand. What's the conversion rate of that 40% who
> could use the on demand service for moving humans? 50%? That's not a massive
> pile of customers.

Assuming that your estimate 50% of non-truck owners adopting it is correct,
that's 20% of 253 million cars, which is 50 million. Seems massive to me.

> Built in car-seats are almost a mirage, they are wildly uncommon.

What makes you think that they won't become more common (especially among car
service vehicles) if there is a strong demand for them from car subscription
services? It's not like it's a complicated technology to add.

> The premise still remains, overwhelming majority of people will not want to
> abandon a personally owned vehicle for some on-demand car that arrives and
> some varying condition and layout that you have to load/unload every time
> with your things.

I'm not sure how you can be so sure of your prediction of future demand,
especially when technology is changing so fast.

Regarding the particulars you mention, I already load/unload my private car
with stuff, but 90% of the time, it's just me and my backpack.

Sure, you can't use a rented vehicle as paperwork storage, but why would one
use a car for storing paperwork?

Chargers can be provided in the rental vehicle (just like Starbucks does).

> Try it for a week if you drive

I routinely take the train (with the kids and all their gear), and we have to
naturally take everything we brought with us when we get off. If anything, the
rental car scenario is more convenient than that.

------
stevebmark
I like Lyft quite a lot as a company. However, partnering with another company
is often a bad sign. It means Lyft needs more cash and isn't able to innovate
enough on its own to survive in the market. Additionally, $500 million to
"work on developing a so-called autonomous on-demand network of self-driving
cars" is a demoralizing statement. 500m is not enough to complete this goal,
especially for such a large company as General Motors. From the uninformed
sidelines, I predict this is a hail mary pass with a minimal chance of success
and long term support.

~~~
frandroid
Do you even _know_ how much money Uber has raised so far? Lyft is already
being outspent by Uber in many aspects. It's not that Lyft doesn't have proper
market fit, it's that Uber has raised megatons of cash.

------
alexk7
The last time GM invested in companies that competed with private ownership of
cars, it didn't go too well...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

~~~
wavefunction
Perhaps it went right to plan.

------
discodave
If you are surpised that GM might invest in Lyft, remember that Daimler AG
(a.k.a. Mercedes & friends) OWNS Car2go.

While I believe that the future of transport will involve a mixture of self
driving vehicles and mass-transit (also potentially self-driving) we need to
remember that this problem is being attacked from many angles.

Right now in many large cities we ALREADY have a mixture of:

Car ownership, human transportation (walking, biking), mass transit, car
sharing (Zipcar, Car2go, Getaround), and finally RIDE sharing (Uber, Lyft).

I would actually argue that car-sharing services might be some of the first to
use fully-autonomous driving technologies. Imagine Zipcar getting a permit to
use self-driving cars on certain known routes between their pods, or to go for
maintenance/refuelling. Uber and Lyft will be among the last to use fully-
autonomous technology because they already have somebody getting PAID to drive
and they have the widest area to cover.

------
sixQuarks
I think GM is wasting their money. The talented engineers in this space are
flocking to Tesla, Google and soon-to-be Apple.

~~~
digitalneal
Who the heck wants to enter the GM tech culture?

~~~
otterley
It's an investment and probably a board seat. I doubt GM is going to interfere
with their day to day engineering decisions.

~~~
softawre
From the article:

> Daniel Ammann, president of G.M., will join Lyft’s board of directors.

------
c141charlie
What happens when the first person gets killed while riding in an autonomous
vehicle? Do companies who make them get sued into oblivion? Will customers
stop riding in them regardless of whether or not statistics suggest they are
safer than traditional cars?

------
crb002
Brilliant. Concierge drivers consume very new cars, decreasing use of older
ones thus driving GM sales.

~~~
petra
And for lyft, it gives a more adaptive workforce - say there's increase in
demand for SUV's - the workforce can more easily adapt.

That seems like an important thing when you look at uber's recent UberHop
experiment - using SUV's as small ,almost on-demand mini buses for quite
cheap. this looks like something that can grow very rapidly.

------
netcan
Everyone is relating this mostly to autonomous vehicles. I think this might
take uber/lyft straight out of the game.

Ubers advantage/most is the network. Its hard to beat a network advantage.
They are installed and plugged into a lot of people's creditcredit cards. That
works just as well for self driving cars. But the advantage of the driver
network is straight out the door if autonomous vehicles replace humans.
Networks become a much easier problem to solve.

I don't see it happening within 10 years but if I we're uber or lyft I
wouldn't want to.

~~~
rconti
I don't get how the driver network has any value. I see all the value in the
passenger network. Of course Uber wants self-driving cars to happen.

------
wheaties
Not to hijack, but how do we stop esentially duplicate URLs in "new" see
([http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/technology/gm-
invests-i...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/technology/gm-invests-in-
lyft.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-
share&referer=http://jalopnik.com/gm-to-invest-500-million-in-lyft-build-
autonomous-on-1750886157&_r=0)) not matching?

~~~
BinaryIdiot
The subdomain is probably the issue. Suggest updating it to strip out
subdomain, query string, hashes etc and do a domain and path comparison. Too
many sites have a mobile subdomain with the rest of the domain the same.

~~~
gk1
Also, sites like NYTimes add different URL parameters based on how you arrived
at the article (eg, which menu item you clicked). I strip those out when
submitting to HN, but others might not, so HN views it as a different URL.

------
martinald
Interesting idea to have the short term car rental. I assume this will include
proper insurance which I think is one of the big 'hidden costs' that these
services aren't covering.

Very good way for Lyft to increase the amount of drivers on their network
without people having to finance vehicles of their own (which isn't worth it
unless you drive a lot for them).

------
nodesocket
This kind of leaves a sour taste in my mouth, seeing as GM took an 11 billion
dollar government bailout. Should they really be allowed to make speculative
bets in a highly competitive market, where the market leader (Uber)
essentially has unlimited capital? Isn't this the kind of stuff that got GM
into trouble?

------
ttaubkin
It's interesting to see how the aggressive tactics of Uber are affecting the
automotive industry. Companies are partnering which would have never even
talked to each other previously. I'm very curious to see how this whole thing
plays out.

------
chiph
I'm wondering if this an IP raid by GM. A couple of terms of the deal are that
GM gets a seat on the board (for $500m, _I would expect so_ ) and access to
Lyft's software. The latter might be the important part to GM.

------
William1000
With the decline of car ownership, a huge loss in jobs wills follow.

To me, one of the biggest long-term problems the U.S. faces is the rising gap
between the rich and poor. Unfortunately, SDRs will only widen this.

------
golergka
So, can we say that this is the moment when taxi industry and car production
industry are officially starting to turn into a single unified transportation
industry?

------
chheplo
This can be Alibaba of GM as after few years majority of GM's market cap will
be due to their stack in Lyft.

------
rconti
It's either a vote of confidence in Lyft or a desperate attempt to stay
relevant.

------
shaunnestor
Why do you think GM invested in Lyft rather than Uber?

In my experience, Uber is more established, well-respected, leading the ride-
sharing movement. Why would GM partner with the seemingly second-place horse
in the race?

~~~
frandroid
Uber's price might have been too steep. They probably think they don't need
GM.

------
btbuildem
Ugh, self driving cars, but SHITTY self-driving cars. Of course.

~~~
rconti
Your Pontiac Torrent is here!

