
GM Unveils Maven, Its New Play in Car-Sharing Services - prostoalex
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/20/gm-unveils-maven-its-big-play-in-car-sharing-and-other-new-ownership-models/
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Qworg
I really like this play - GM can undercut other organizations that are forced
to purchase their vehicles, as well as realizing savings on maintenance. Over
time, they can slowly strangle competitors in the car manufacturing business -
users lower their usage of personal vehicles, due to easy access to Maven
vehicles. Then they switch away to Maven permanently.

It also sets them up, in the long term, to run a self-driving car
organization. It establishes the brand, service, and the maintenance
organization.

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bane
I thought this was weird at first too, but the more I think on it and the more
I realize how much of GM's output just ends up in fleets anyway, the more I
realize how much it makes a kind of sense.

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skewart
Except that I doubt they'd want their entire output to end up in fleets. The
margins are far lower.

The whole trend away from personal ownership of cars is very bad for
manufacturers because it changes the buying decision from an emotional one to
a carefully calculated business one. People are generally willing to pay far
higher margins when emotions are involved.

I suspect they feel they have no choice but to get involved in this trend, and
are very unhappy that they're doing this.

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JoshTriplett
Nice to see more competition in this area. However, I find it concerning to
see vertical integration between a car manufacturer and a car-sharing service.
I can certainly understand why they might do so (as a hedge against societal
changes towards needing fewer cars), but I also wonder whether that vertical
integration will result in some unfortunate incentives.

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_asdf_asdf

      mvn clean package
      mvn deploy

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SAS721
Seems to me like a smart way to get their feet wet in the industry before
autonomous cars become available. Since the first few generations will likely
cost in multi-100,000 dollar range, the car-sharing model makes a ton of
sense.

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alistproducer2
GM employee here. I have to say I'm impressed with where my company is headed.

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bkeroack
"As low as $6/hour"

Which means you can expect ~50% more than that for the realistic case -- maybe
$9-10/hour. Which (at $200+/day) is no better than an average rental car.

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ghaff
i.e. pretty much the same as Zipcar short-term rentals (which seems to be
$7.50-$8.50/hr). Zipcar at least also has a daily option that's about $70, so
in the same ballpark as rentals. (Though people I know who use Zipcar often
use car rental services like rent-a-wreck for daily rentals.) They typically
use the short term rentals to run errands or otherwise go places for a few
hours.

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MrFoof
The only ZipCars you'll find for ~$8/hour are hybrids. I live in Boston, and
unless I book the car well in advance (or am willing to go well out of my way
to get it), they're long gone. $10-13/hour is much more typical with what's
available on a "right now and near me" basis.

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finid
BMW has one. M. Benz, too.

At this rate, every auto manufacturer will have its own car-sharing service.
Traditional taxi and car rental companies are about to go the way of the dodo.

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csours
Car rental companies used to be at least partially owned by manufacturers: for
instance Avis was partially owned by GM [1] (at least 29% at one point). These
were used to offload excess inventory and prop up production of lower-feature
cars.

It will be interesting to see how these services are used strategically by
manufacturers - possibly refreshing these fleets when consumer demand is low;
and subsequently how this is signalled to service users. It does look like for
now these are full featured cars.

Enterprise currently has a car-sharing service as well. [2]

Disclaimer: I work for GM, but not in this area; these opinions are solely my
own.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avis_Rent_a_Car_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avis_Rent_a_Car_System)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Rent-A-
Car#Enterpri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Rent-A-
Car#Enterprise_CarShare)

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crudbug
I like the direction where GM is going - Car as a Service model with seamless
HAI (Human Access Interface). I just concocted this.

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knz
Isn't a major limitation of "Car as a Service" the fact that millions of
people commute at approximately the same time? Services like this seem like
they would be fantastic if you live somewhere with good public
transport/bike/pedestrian accessibility to get around during peak times and
just need a car occasionally but do not seem viable in a suburban environment
(where tens of millions of us still live). Hopefully innovation like this will
result in better public and alternative forms of transportation that allow the
car as a service to work in suburban environments.

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crudbug
True, I was thinking about Urban areas. As you pointed out this should
gradually grow to cover suburban sprawls.

I am imagining CaaS parking spaces popping up everywhere.

ZipCar was the first innovator in this space.

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zymhan
How is GM going to differentiate this service from Zipcar?

Can you park the cars in different places than where you got them? More
granular billing?

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femto113
At the start the only spots are on campus, but I'm hoping they will eventually
offer true one way trips ala car2go, which I've found to be a fundamentally
more useful service than zipcar. $6/hour if you only need one hour to say go
from school to a store to home is awesome. If you need to return it to the
original parking spot and then make your way home from there you're doubling
the time and eliminating the convenience.

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VikingCoder
> Rates for getting cars through these programs will cost as low as $6/hour,
> Ammann said.

What a giant rip-off. I can rent a car for $16.24 per day, right now. Maven is
8 times more expensive.

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GFK_of_xmaspast
And you're presumably stuck driving a GM too.

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sjg007
So like ZipCar?

