Would You Hitch a Ride in a Driverless Corvette?
Imagine being able to click an app on your smart phone and have a driverless Corvette pick you up for a night on the town. Far-fetched you say?
Well, maybe not as much as you think. General Motors just announced a new long-term partnership with Lyft that will include providing the rideshare company with autonomous vehicles built by GM.
“We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless, and autonomous,” said GM President Dan Ammann in a press release. “With GM and Lyft working together, we believe we can successfully implement this vision more rapidly.”
The strategic alliance, which includes a $500 million investment, will kick off with GM serving as a preferred provider of short-term use vehicles to Lyft drivers through rental hubs in a number of cities in the U.S.
Of course, vehicles like the Chevy Volt, Spark, and Trax would certainly seem like a more natural fit for the program than a ‘Vette. But could interest in being able to catch a ride in a driverless sportscar possibly spur GM to add the halo car to the mix sometime later?
Only time will tell. But I imagine there’d be a few folks who wouldn’t mind being chauffeured around town in an autonomous Corvette. It definitely would make for a pretty cool selfie. Then again, entrusting 400-plus horsepower to some invisible operating system on the open road could be a little scary.