Photo: General Motors
Right before the beginning of the new year, General Motors China wanted to give something back to the community that is more and more suffocated by the hazardous levels of pollution, and it introduced a pilot carpooling program for its Shanghai employees.
Thanks to this initiative, around 700 employees at GM China’s Shanghai headquarters can now ride to work together with their colleagues, using a self-developed mobile app. Drivers can input their preferred routes, departure time, and seats available, and then, the system quickly offers a number of drivers for riders to approach. When a commuter is accepted, the mobile app instantly shows one fewer available seats.
According to Vivian Yu, head of GM China Urban Active Projects, “the program merges the Internet with intelligent mobile technology” and “it will not only benefit our team members but also enable us to test software systems in everyday usage scenarios.”
Julia Steyn, GM vice president at Urban Active, thinks that this initiative will help the company to further expand its activities in alternate transportation models in China, and also learn more about vehicle user behavior.
The idea for this pilot program in Shanghai comes after GM launched its first residential car-sharing initiative, called Let’s Drive NYC, in the U.S. This mobility service uses some integrated OnStar connectivity technologies and services, and access to OnStar advisers with the push of a button.
In Europe, through its Opel brand, the American company released CarUnity, a peer-to-peer sharing service. Thanks to this program, dealers and their fleets provide a number of available vehicles for sharing.
All these moves prove that, in recent months, General Motors invested a lot of time and money in this type of community services, and further initiatives will come in the first quarter of 2016.
The American carmaker has been a major player in the automotive world since 1908, and China is one of its most important markets, with more than 58,000 employees and more than 3.5 million vehicles sold in this country.
According to Vivian Yu, head of GM China Urban Active Projects, “the program merges the Internet with intelligent mobile technology” and “it will not only benefit our team members but also enable us to test software systems in everyday usage scenarios.”
Julia Steyn, GM vice president at Urban Active, thinks that this initiative will help the company to further expand its activities in alternate transportation models in China, and also learn more about vehicle user behavior.
The idea for this pilot program in Shanghai comes after GM launched its first residential car-sharing initiative, called Let’s Drive NYC, in the U.S. This mobility service uses some integrated OnStar connectivity technologies and services, and access to OnStar advisers with the push of a button.
In Europe, through its Opel brand, the American company released CarUnity, a peer-to-peer sharing service. Thanks to this program, dealers and their fleets provide a number of available vehicles for sharing.
All these moves prove that, in recent months, General Motors invested a lot of time and money in this type of community services, and further initiatives will come in the first quarter of 2016.
The American carmaker has been a major player in the automotive world since 1908, and China is one of its most important markets, with more than 58,000 employees and more than 3.5 million vehicles sold in this country.
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