ELKHART LAKE, WI – Only four months old, General Motors’ Maven car-sharing program is serving five markets and the automaker says its members have driven more than 1 million miles (1.61 million km) in GM vehicles.
Maven plans to expand into more cities and offer a wider variety of vehicles, although marketing director Zafar Razzacki isn’t offering specifics.
“We will offer a variety of vehicles in a number of cities and hope to have our service coast to coast,” Razzacki says during an interview at the Midwest Automotive Media Assn.’s spring rally here.
He says only that Maven has offered at least 400 GM vehicles for ride sharing in the past four months and that rentals run from a couple of hours during weekdays to an entire weekend for leisure activities. “We are pleased with reservations during the week and have seen the heaviest usage on weekends,” Razzacki says.
Maven operates in New York; Ann Arbor, MI; and has just added Boston, Chicago and Washington.
Chicago, the latest city to offer Maven service, rents vehicles starting at $8 an hour including insurance and fuel. Registered customers use a Maven smartphone app to reserve one of 30 vehicles at more than 15 sites throughout the city.
Members reserve their choice of available Chevrolet, Cadillac and Buick vehicles and have the option of having the vehicle delivered to them.
Maven membership is free. “We hope to stay that way for a long time,” Razzacki says while declining to discuss revenue projections for the ride-sharing service.
