GM Shutters Maven Car Sharing Business

General Motors is shutting down its Maven car sharing service, having already put the business on hold amid the coronavirus pandemic. The automaker launched Maven back in 2016, and up until recently it was operational in seven markets across the US and Canada.

Like other such services, Maven offered access to a vehicle when required, without the need to lease or own one full-time. Rentals could be by the hour, day, or even month, with insurance, fuel, and other costs all bundled into a single fee. Unlike rival car sharing platforms, however, Maven also allowed existing owners of GM family vehicles to share their cars hourly or daily, as part of a peer-to-peer sharing option.

In addition, Maven offered gig drivers – such as those working for Lyft and Uber – access to cars when required. Until now, the company's services had been available in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Detroit/Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Toronto.

Now, though, it's winding down for good, a GM spokesperson confirmed. "We've gained extremely valuable insights from operating our own car-sharing business," Pamela Fletcher, Vice President of Global Innovation at General Motors, said in a statement to SlashGear. "Our learnings and developments from Maven will go on to benefit and accelerate the growth of other areas of GM business."

Maven's car sharing service was already suspended during the COVID-19 crisis, and will not resume. Gig services operations, meanwhile, have already been very limited, a GM spokesperson confirmed. They will continue to wind down. Maven currently has around 230,000 members, and approximately 1,400 in its fleet in total. GM plans to contact customers directly to help them find an alternative service they can use.

The exact timeline of the shutdown will vary by market, but GM expects Maven to have ceased operations completely by later this summer. That's assuming government restrictions in COVID-19-affected areas don't interfere. Maven assets and resources will be transferred to other areas of GM, and could form the basis of new businesses.

That may well include new GM fleet services, though right now the automaker isn't saying what, exactly, they could comprise of. It'll be the responsibility of GM's Global Innovation organization to figure that out, the division responsible for things like shared mobility, EVs, autonomous driving, and more.

[Updated to add Maven user statistics]