General Motors is ending its app-based car sharing service, Maven, after four years in operation.
The automaker alerted its 230,000 customers Tuesday that, “Effective immediately, Maven Car Sharing will no longer be available.”
“We won’t be accepting any new reservations,” Katlynn Downey, Maven spokesperson, told the Free Press, citing the requirement of high capital investment but lower long-term profitability as reasons to end the service.
Last May, Maven signaled a move to leave the market or reduce its services in some of the 24 areas where it was offered. Currently, Maven is in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Detroit/Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Toronto.
In March, Maven suspended its services because of market conditions and to protect employees and customers amid the coronavirus pandemic, Downey said.
The decision to discontinue the service was made based on “a number of factors,” Downey said.
“We looked at Maven as a business as well as the car sharing industry,” Downey said. “It’s a high investment business and operational costs are high. We felt it was best to focus our business in other areas where there’s greater potential for profitability and growth.”
Maven, which launched in Ann Arbor in 2016, is a car-sharing program that enables users to rent cars by the hour for as low as $9 for a Chevrolet Cruze compact. The cars also can be rented under the Maven Gig program for jobs such as Uber driving or meal delivery.
Finally, in 2018 it started offering a peer-to-peer service, which allowed those who owned or leased a 2015 model or newer GM vehicle to list their cars on the Maven app for rent to others when the owners weren’t using them. The owner kept 60% of the revenue from a rental; Maven received the balance.
There are about 1,400 vehicles in the Maven fleet that GM will sell at auction to dealers to be sold as used vehicles, Downey said.
The wind-down of Maven will vary by market and should conclude by this summer. It still must collect the cars in use by Gig customers, Downey said.
Other Maven assets and resources will be transferred to GM’s Global Innovation organization and GM. The automaker said the service did offer it insights it will apply to other GM areas. For example, there were Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles in the Maven fleet that gave GM insight into mileage and wear-and-tear on EVs, Downey said. GM has said it envisions an all-electric vehicle future and Cruise, its self-driving arm, is working to launch an all-electric autonomous ride-sharing fleet in the future.
“We’ve gained extremely valuable insights from operating our own car-sharing business,” said Pamela Fletcher, GM’s vice president of global innovation. “Our learnings and developments from Maven will go on to benefit and accelerate the growth of other areas of GM business.”
More: GM’s car-sharing service Maven to start exiting certain cities
Contact Jamie L. LaReau: 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter.
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