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Lyft are teaming up with GM to try and create a driverless car network
General Motors - the American carmaking corporation that owns Vauxhall - is collaborating with a San Francisco-based company to develop a fleet of driverless taxis - making the Johnny Cabs from Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall a reality.
GM will invest a total of $500m in Lyft in order for the two companies to establish joint research teams to develop the network of vehicles.
The move demonstrates a change in the way the big US carmakers are reacting to the challenge of tech companies Silicon Valley, facing up to threats such as Tesla's revolutionary cars or Google's self-driving car project.
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Google have already been working on their driverless cars for a few years
However, in a spirit of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", carmakers are now investing in technologies such as connectivity and self-driving cars, many of which are on show at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
GM's link with Lyft is a way for the company to look at ways of tackling phenomena such as changing car ownership patterns, the falling sales among young consumers, car sharing and the rise of ride-hailing taxi services such as Uber and Lyft.
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Entrepreneur Elon Musk owns revolutionary manufacturer Tesla
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General motors own a number of big car manufacturers including Chevrolet, Cadillac and Vauxhall
Some customers don't necessarily want to own a car, but they want to be able to use one
Dan Ammann, GM president
Dan Ammann, GM's president, said some customers "don't necessarily want to own a car, but they want to be able to use one" through services such as Lyft's.
"We see that the first large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles is likely to be into a ride-sharing network," he said.
However, the companies made no statement about how quickly the products of their collaboration coulee be on the roads, as regulations on self-driving have still to be agreed on by legislators in the US and Europe.
- Daily Express