General Motors to Invest $100M to Develop Facilities

General Motors Co. (GM) on Thursday announced that the company would invest more than $100 million in its two facilities as it gets ready to build the production of its autonomous vehicle in 2019 at its Orion Township assembly plant in Michigan.

According to the biggest U.S. carmaker, the roof modules for its self-driving cars will be made at its Brownstown Battery Assembly plant.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been reviewing the petition, which GM filed last January as it seeks the approval of the U.S. government for a fully self-driving vehicle to enter the company’s first commercial ride-sharing fleet next year.

However, NHTSA has not considered the petition as complete yet. A final decision from NHTSA will come later this year or next year.

Last Tuesday, GM Chief Executive Mary Barra met with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and discussed the autonomous vehicle efforts of the company.

The Detroit-based automaker is part of an increasing mass of car manufacturers, technology companies, and tech startups seeking to develop “robo-taxis” over the next three years in Asia, North America, and Europe.

On the other hand, other companies, such as Alphabet Inc’s Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc. have been testing out their autonomous vehicle prototypes in limited ride sharing applications.

GM Plans a Rent Out Service

GM is planning a service that will allow owners to rent out their cars to other people, according to a report.

The report stated that GM would start testing its new service this summer. Owners can list their cars on the app of Maven and let other people rent them. The revenue will be split between the owner and the U.S. automaker.

Maven is an operating car-sharing services in some U.S. cities as well as Maven Gig, which rents cars to drivers working for ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft. But this new service, which is known as “peer-to-peer” car sharing, marks the first time that GM would use cars that the company does not own.

As of now, peer-to-peer car sharing is the domain of some smaller businesses like Getaround and Turo.

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