General Motors invests in Chinese car sharing app
Of late, quite a few car manufacturers have begun investing in car rental and car sharing services. In May this year, BMW invested an undisclosed amount in a carpooling mobile application called Scoop. Toyota has invested an undisclosed sum in Uber while Volkswagen has invested Rs 2,000 crore into car rental company Gett.
At the start of this year, General Motors inaugurated a new company Maven which offers car sharing services via an app. The service is already operational in the city of Ann Arbor in Michigan. The company has also invested $500 million into Uber rival Lyft and bought intellectual property of a ride sharing service Sidecar.
Now, Reuters is reporting that General Motors has invested an undisclosed sum of money into YI Wei Xing (Beijing) Technology Co Ltd, which offers car rental and car sharing services. This is the first time that the carmaker has made an investment in a ride sharing service provider in China.
In a telephonic interview with Reuters, Vijay Iyer, official spokesperson for the Maven car-sharing service, commented that the company is considering expanding into China and the opportunities present in the market and Yi Wei Xing is a step in that direction. "We are now purchasing technology in that market to be able to deliver ride-sharing experiences and we will take it from there," he added.
Iyer revealed that GM decided to invest in this particular start-up as it has already become popular in China. When asked if the Maven car-sharing service and Yi Wei Xing would collaborate with one another, he said that it is too early to comment.
Source: Reuters
