Image courtesy of General Motors.

General Motors (GM) and the transportation network company Lyft recently announced a long-term strategic alliance to create an integrated network of on-demand autonomous vehicles in the United States.

In exchange for its $500 million investment in the company, GM will now hold a seat on Lyft’s board of directors.

“We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless and autonomous,” said GM president Dan Ammann. “With GM and Lyft working together, we believe we can successfully implement this vision more rapidly.”

The partnership aims to combine GM’s knowledge of autonomous vehicles with Lyft’s peer-to-peer ridesharing infrastructure. As the new preferred provider of short-term vehicles for Lyft, GM will immediately begin introducing rental hubs to major American cities.

General Motors president Dan Ammann (center) with Lyft co-founders John Zimmer (right) and Logan Green (left). (Image courtesy of General Motors.)

These hubs will give Lyft drivers access to GM vehicles, meaning that soon even those who don’t own cars will be able to earn money with Lyft.

“Together we will build a better future by redefining traditional car ownership,” said John Zimmer, president and co-founder of Lyft.

Is GM Giving Up on Private Car Ownership?

Autonomous car optimists are likely to see this announcement as portending a major shift in American car ownership.

Lyft and GM seem to agree that a shared-service—rather than private ownership—is the best avenue for autonomous cars to enter the marketplace.

If that’s that goal of this partnership, then GM’s rental hubs would be a logical next step.

In fact, GM is already exploring ride-sharing programs internally, with a recent announcement that General Motors China is running a carpooling pilot program. Perhaps we’ll see GM rental hubs replace GM dealerships.

On the other hand, this could also be interpreted as just another (albeit clever) marketing maneuver.

Expect to see more GM vehicles bearing Lyft's signature mustache. (Image courtesy of General Motors.)

Think of all the licensed drivers in major cities who opt out of car ownership for financial reasons. Now consider how many of those people would welcome the opportunity not only to share cars, but to earn money as Lyft drivers at the same time.

That’s a substantial number of people who wouldn’t have been GM customers otherwise.

We should also keep in mind that although the $500 million investment in Lyft effectively doubled the amount of money the company has raised so far, it’s not an outrageous amount for GM, which invested over $7 billion in its U.S. facilities in 2015 alone.

What is the Future of Autonomous Vehicles?

This investment could mean that GM is merely testing the waters of the autonomous vehicle market before diving in. Indeed, $500 million for a seat on Lyft’s board of directors is practically a steal compared to the $50 billion valuation of Uber, its biggest competitor.

This could very well be part of an emerging pattern of established automakers pairing off with younger companies in order to produce autonomous vehicles. There’s the rumored Ford/Google partnership, as well as BMW and Baidu working to launch the first autonomous car on public roads in China.

Even with all the prognosticating that the next 10 to 15 years will see an autonomous vehicle revolution, there is a lingering assumption that such a fundamental shift has to start with the major auto manufacturers.

Speculations about the future of autonomous vehicles are always couched in terms of which major manufacturer—or Tesla—will end up dominating the market. If we really are seeing the beginning of a fundamental change in the way we interact with automobiles, maybe we need to revaluate our assumptions about how the industry itself operates.

If a hacker can build a self-driving car in his garage in a month, the future of the autonomous vehicle industry is even less certain. Who knows? Automating your own car could emerge as a sort of fringe hobby like home computers in the 70s and 80s or 3D printing today.

Perhaps in a decade or two, owning your own car will be comparable to owning your own horse: the relic of a bygone age, its obsolescence converting it from a necessity into a luxury.

Whatever the case, I’m willing to bet that we’ll see more automobile innovation in the next five years than we have in the past 50.

For more information about the future autonomous cars, click here.