By Greg Gardner
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT — General Motors and ride-hailing service Lyft are expanding their Express Drive vehicle rental program to Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco to give more Lyft drivers the chance to rent GM vehicles, the companies said Monday.
The program will start later this summer in San Francisco and this fall in Los Angeles and Denver. California Lyft drivers will have access to the GMC Terrain, Chevrolet Equinox, Malibu, Volt and, by the end of the year, the 2017 Bolt EV.
Lyft officials said there are more than 130,000 people in the three metropolitan areas who have applied to become Lyft drivers but don’t have vehicles that meet Lyft requirements.
GM invested $500 million in Lyft in exchange for a 9 percent equity stake in the company.
After launching Express Drive in Chicago in March, the companies extended the program to Boston, Washington and Baltimore.
In Chicago, Lyft drivers can lease GM vehicles for $99 a week for up to eight weeks. The $99 is waived for drivers who log 65 or more rides per week.
A GM spokesman said rates for Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver will be disclosed later, but “they will be in line with Chicago.”
So far, 30 percent of new Lyft driver applicants in Chicago have requested an Express Drive vehicle.
?”Expanding Express Drive provides opportunities to hundreds of thousands of new potential Lyft drivers and continues to make car ownership optional for both drivers and passengers,” John Zimmer, Lyft president and co-founder, said in a statement. “We are also excited to be adding electric vehicles to Express Drive.”
Zimmer and co-founder Logan Green started the service in 2012. It is the second-largest such service in the U.S. after Uber and is available in more than 200 U.S. cities. Uber operates in twice as many cities in the U.S. and in dozens of countries.
GM sees the markets of LA, San Francisco and Denver as places with high concentrations of hybrid and electric car owners and therefore important markets to quickly place the Volt and Bolt into ride-sharing services.
“The Chevrolet Bolt EV and Volt are a perfect fit for ride-sharing,” said GM President Dan Ammann in a statement.
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