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GM Plans Maven Ridesharing Service

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Burney Simpson

Auto OEMs may want the Young American, but many of the youth of America are choosing ridesharing and turning away from the driver’s license, the 20th Century’s symbol of the passage to maturity.

That demographic change, along with the rise of Uber, has led General Motors to invest in the ridesharing service Lyft and make plans to create Maven, its own transportation services firm, according to Bloomberg Business.

New research from the University of Michigan finds that 77 percent of 20-24 year-olds had driver’s licenses in 2014, down from the 92 percent in 1983.

The school’s Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) found that for 16-44 year olds there was a “continuous decrease in the percentage of persons with a driver’s license” from 1983 to 2014.

This month GM invested $500 million in Lyft, the ride-hailing app that was averaging about 2.5 million rides a month in early 2015, Motley Fool reports. In comparison, Uber was averaging about 30 million rides at the same time.

Lyft’s president predicted that his customers would one day be using the service to access a driverless GM car.

Now GM has bought Sidecar, a San Francisco-based ridesharing firm launched in 2012 that never caught on like Lyft and Uber.

GM is said to have purchased Sidecar for its software, inexpensive price, and several patents.  

The two deals follow GM’s application last November to trademark the word Maven as the name of an urban transportation services firm, Bloomberg reports.

The UMTRI study “Recent Decreases in the Proportion of Persons With a Driver’s License across All Age Groups” was written by Brandon Schoettle and Michael Sivak.

 (In 1974, David Bowie released Young Americans; in the early 60’s the Beach Boys released their ode to the auto Little Deuce Coupe).

Photo: Taxi, Taxi by Damian Morys, 2010.

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Michigan’s Sayer a Change Champion

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Burney Simpson

The White House recently recognized the University of Michigan’s James R. Sayer as one of the 2015 Transportation Champions of Change for his work on connected and automated vehicles.

jim.sayer_PNGSayer is a research scientist and head of the Human Factors Group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).

He currently leads the Connected Vehicle Safety Pilot Model Deployment, a U.S. Department of Transportation-sponsored program. The DOT plans to use the results to determine driver acceptance of connected vehicles, and to “evaluate the feasibility, scalability, security, and device interoperability of connected-vehicle technologies.”

That project has been expanded into the Ann Arbor Connected Vehicle Test Environment. Sayer said in a release that Ann Arbor “will be the world’s first example of how connected vehicle and infrastructure technology can and will be utilized in a community of the future.”

The goal is to make roads safer and reduce fatal vehicle crashes, he said.

“Last year alone there were over 30,000 fatalities. Our current transportation system is responsible for $240 billion per-year cost in terms of medical and work loss,” he said. “Connected vehicles, similar to what we have deployed (here) could reduce up to 80 percent of unimpaired crashes.”

Sayer was instrumental in the development of Mcity, the 32-acre test site for connected and automated vehicles operated by the university’s Mobility Transformation Center that opened this summer in Ann Arbor.

The Transportation Champions of Change are honored for their leadership and innovation in the field. In addition to Sayer, the 2015 Champions are:

Atorod Azizinamini, Marilyn Bull, Habib Dagher, Elaine Roberts, Nathaniel Ford, Sr., Olatunji Oboi Reed, Peter Lagerwey, Robert Portiss, Kyle Wagenschutz, and Carl Weimer.

The champions were honored at a ceremony with Anthony Foxx, secretary of the US DOT, Federal Highways Administrator Greg Nadeau, National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Mark Rosekind, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Acting Administrator Scott Darling, National Economic Council Director and Assistant to the President Jeff Zients, and other officials.

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Does Fewer Daily Travelers Today Indicate a Shift to Shared Driverless Cars Tomorrow?

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Burney Simpson

You may feel like your travel time is more like stuck-in-traffic time, but Americans are actually spending a little less time getting around these days, according to a new report from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).

In 2014, Americans spent 1.11 hours making trips for daily activities, down from 1.23 hours in 2004, reports UMTRI’s Michael Sivak who used data from the nationwide American Time Use Survey for the study. Sivak looked at all modes of travel not just automobiles.

This is the latest study on motorization trends from the research professor. Sivak previously found that 2004 was the peak year for distance driven for Americans.

For the new study, Sivak concluded that there was no overall reduction in the duration of the daily activity trips, but that the percentage of persons traveling to conduct the activities had decreased.

The findings together indicate that Americans are reducing their auto travel, suggesting that consumers may be open to the use of shared autonomous vehicles as the technology develops. A number of forecasts have suggested 2020 as the turning point year when driverless vehicles become available at least in select markets.

In the new study, Sivak reports a decline in average travel time since 2004 for such activities as dining out, shopping, caring for and helping non-household members, work, education, and leisure and sports.

Meanwhile, there was no change in the average travel time for such activities as caring for and helping household members, and engaging in organizational, civic and religious activities. Personal care was the only activity that registered an increase.

New University of Michigan poll suggests drivers still wary of handing over control to autonomous cars

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