GM vehicle owners could make some cash with car-sharing app
DETROIT – People who own or lease a late-model Chevrolet, Buick, GMC or Cadillac car in some Midwest cities now don’t have to just leave it sitting idle in the parking lot. They can now put that car to work making money.
General Motors’ mobility unit, Maven, said it is testing a new peerto-peer car sharing offering through the Maven app in Chicago, Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The service, Peer Cars, allows those who own or lease a 2015 model or newer GM vehicle to list their vehicles on the Maven app for rent to others when the owners aren’t using the cars. The owner keeps 60 percent of the revenue from renting the car and Maven gets the rest.
The idea is similar to Airbnb, which is an online market where people can list their properties for shortterm rentals to travelers. In this case, the demand for car sharing is strong, said Julia Steyn, vice president of GM Urban Mobility and Maven.
“You see the willingness for the Airbnb members to put their house on the platform,” Steyn said in an interview. “I think it’s a lot less personal and emotional to put a car on the platform than your own bed.”
Steyn said a car is one of the most expensive things to own, and leaving it to sit idle is a wasted asset. Maven’s peer-to-peer offering is a way for owners to “offset their vehicle investment,” she said.
Maven is available in 17 cities. It is an on-demand mobility sharing service available through an app. Members can rent cars by the hour, the day, the week or the month.
On the Maven app, Peer Cars will be available alongside Maven Cars for consideration by more than 150,000 current Maven members, she said. In Detroit, for instance, Maven currently offers 50 cars.
Peer Cars will work the same way Maven does now. A person looking to rent a vehicle goes on the Maven app, selects a car they like for the price they want, goes to the car’s location, uses their phone to unlock the vehicle and “off you go,” Steyn said. If it’s a Peer Car, it will have the Peer Car icon next to it on the Maven app, but that’s the only difference. The owner and the renter never have to meet or exchange keys, she said.
A car owner who wants to list a vehicle for rental will fill out an application with Maven providing the vehicle identification number to see if it qualifies by being a 2015 model year or newer. Maven then schedules a time to bring the car on to the platform.
“We come out and take pictures of (the) car and install the accessories that allow a phone to open the car,” Steyn said.
The owner chooses how or when they put their car on the platform. Maven offers owners a suggested price range for their car rental, which will be about 20 percent more or less than Maven’s other rental car prices.
“It’s not really competing with Maven’s rentals, it’s an opportunity to offer more supply for the demand we’re seeing,” Steyn said. “We’re excited to see more cars on the platform.”
During reservations, all vehicles are insured through GM’s $1 million insurance policy, GM said. Also, every driving member must be vetted by GM before the driver is approved to use the service. Owner support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week from trained Maven and OnStar advisers.
Maven’s team will analyze the data from the Peer Cars test group in the three cities before rolling it out to more U.S. cities in the fall, GM said.
“The Beta helps us better understand the owner part of the equation – what do they need, how do they like to be engaged, does the app meet their needs, etc.,” said Annalisa Bluhm, a GM spokeswoman. “It’s very much an important and necessary learning process ahead of full commercialization.”