GM’s car sharing service Maven is expanding to the largest city in the U.S., the company announced Monday. The expansion is one of many for the company, which originally began operating only in January 2016, and is now available in 17 different markets across North America. Maven now includes three service offerings, including City, which is on-demand short-term rental; Home, which offers shared fleets at residential buildings for resident use; and Gig, which is a short-term rental option for on-demand economy drivers.
Maven’s New York fleet will include over 80 vehicles at launch, all of which include included 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspots, CarPlay and Android Auto, as well as OnStar support. They also include insurance in the cost of the rental, which can be reserved on either an hourly or daily basis.
While never formally announced, Maven Home is actually a new arm of GM’s Maven mobility services umbrella. It’s new to Maven, but it actually harkens back to one of GM’s first forays into ownership alternatives – Let’s Drive NYC, which debuted in October 2015, and which provided service focused on residential buildings. Maven Home is similar, offering dedicated cars just for use of a building’s residents, with fuel and insurance bundled into the hourly rental rates.
The New York growth is a key market for Maven, and could likely be one of its strongest, given the urban density and resident comfort with ownership alternatives.