Maven Says Uber and Lyft Drivers Love Chevy Bolt

General Motor’s Maven car sharing unit finds that Uber and Lyft drivers love the Chevy Bolt and are putting a lot of miles behind the wheel.

Rachel Bhattacharya, who heads GM’s commercial mobility unit, spoke about it yesterday at a CAR Management Briefing Seminar in Traverse City, Mich.

The Maven fleet brought in 150 Bolts during May, and has 250 more on order.

Bolt rentals have done very well through the Maven Gig program, where ride-hailing and delivery service drivers rent a Maven vehicle for a week at a time. Maven Gig launched in May in San Diego and has expanded to San Francisco.

Drivers pay more for the Chevy Bolt under the program than they would under other Maven rentals; but they end up saving money on fuel costs.

Drivers pay $229 for the weekly rental, which covers insurance, maintenance, and charging. It’s about $40 more than other rentals, but drivers end up saving about $70 a week on fuelcosts, the GM executive said.

“Early interest has been phenomenal,” Bhattacharya said. “For most of them, it’s not about environmentalism. It’s about fuel savings.”

It’s taken off in the past three months. The GM mobility executive said that drivers are putting an average of 30 percent more miles in the Bolt than while driving cars with internal combustion engines.

Maven customers have put in more than 1 million miles during their Bolt rentals since the offer was launched in May.

The car sharing service is doing business now in 17 North America since its startup 18 months ago. Besides Maven Gig, the Maven Home service has done well with customers living in apartment and condo complexes and needing short trips in a shared rental car.

Bhattacharya said established brands like Zipcar helped open the door for Maven.

GM has the advantage of getting young consumers to try out car sharing services and its own vehicle products, which could the first car they end up buying.

It’a also setting the stage for testing self-driving Bolts through its partnership with Lyft and through its Maven subsidiary,

“The whole goal of Maven is we’re the learning laboratory for General Motors as we’re preparing for an autonomous future,” she said. “We’re still very much in startup mode, but we’ve had some positive results to date.”