GM Forms Joint Venture With Lyft Days After Cruise Automation Acquisition

General Motors Company GM announced a short-term car rental joint venture with ride-hailing service Lyft, just days after it bought self-driving car software firm Cruise Automation. The new program called Express Drive will rent GM cars to Lyft drivers at $99 per week, including insurance and maintenance. Express Drive will roll out later this month in Chicago and be expanded to additional cities including Boston, Washington D.C., Baltimore and others. Drivers are not required to pay weekly rental cost if they completed 65 rides a week in Chicago. In addition, the program offers flexible terms for drivers who can rent cars on a weekly basis for up to eight weeks at a time. "We're very pleased with how quickly the GM and Lyft team collaborated to create the Express Drive program, which we will be implementing using our Maven mobility infrastructure," GM President Dan Ammann said in a statement. "There is a definite need for access to high-quality GM cars for Lyft. In Chicago alone, there were 60,000 people who applied to drive on the Lyft platform, but did not have a car that qualified. Express Drive directly addresses this need for millions of Americans who do not have access to a qualifying vehicle," Lyft said in a statement. Miffed with the success of autonomous vehicles such as Model S from Tesla Motors Inc TSLA, GM is investing more on autonomous technology. In January, it invested $500 million in Lyft as part of its deal to develop an integrated on-demand network of autonomous vehicles. The automaker followed it up with the purchase of Cruise Automation last week to aid in its development of autonomous vehicle technology. "The acquisition of Cruise is GM's latest step toward its goal of redefining the future of personal mobility," GM said when announcing the deal last Friday. GM shares were down 1.35 percent at $30.75. They were down 10 percent this year.