A smartphone displaying the Maven app

. Chrysler owned airplane-maker Gulfstream in the mid-1980s.There are dangers. Paying for parking, insurance and gas for a car she barely uses would be a hassle, she says. BMW started a New York-based mobility venture capital firm in 2011. in 1984 but sold it 12 years later. Ford CEO Mark Fields is confident they do. Automakers are reinventing themselves as "mobility" companies that can accommodate all the different ways people get around.A smartphone displaying the Maven app, a General Motors car-sharing service, is shown. In each case, the companies sold those businesses to refocus on car-making. Colin Langan, an auto analyst with UBS, said investors understand the need to invest in new mobility, and expect companies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year doing so. "Historically, automakers have not been good allocators of cash," Langan said. If the companies decide to keep working together, they will eventually hammer out details like licensing fees for the software. Automakers that don& https://www.cnluba.com/product/rubber-wheel-chocks/ 039;t adapt risk being supplanted by high-tech competitors. Making vehicles is complicated and expensive, and car companies have stumbled when they've taken on new businesses. Toyota has 70 tiny electric cars zipping around Grenoble, France, as part of its car-sharing service.S. Ford owned Hertz rental cars but sold it a decade ago.There's also the open question of whether drivers want automakers to do more than make cars. "We believe in speed," Ammann said. But alarm bells may go off if they're routinely spending more.Already this year, General Motors has announced an alliance with ride-hailing company Lyft and started a car-sharing service called Maven. Instead, she rents a Chevrolet Volt from Maven for $42 a day when she wants to run errands. He stresses that FCA's partnership with Google is open-ended and not exclusive. Ford has done much of its mobility work in-house. In January, it invested $500 million in Lyft to co-develop a service that lets customers summon self-driving cars."It goes back to Henry Ford and one of his favorite quotes: 'If I asked people what they wanted, they'd say they wanted a faster horse,'" Fields said. In response, carmakers are reinventing themselves as "mobility" companies that can accommodate all the different ways people get around. That means 550,000 fewer cars sold each year. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is partnering with Google to test self-driving software in 100 of its minivans. Ford created a division based in Silicon Valley to invest in promising transportation startups."Fields adds that the financial case is too compelling to ignore. sales and plowing the profits into mobility experiments.GM has been the most aggressive of the Detroit companies.Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne says it's dangerous for automakers to place big bets on one solution. The company has run more than 30 global mobility experiments over the past 18 months, including a concept in India that lets multiple families or co-workers share a car and a ride-hailing van service for workers on its Dearborn campus."Walking in a collaborative fashion with people who have historically been viewed as intruders and potential enemies of our business - walking with them at their speed - is the best possible solution for us in terms of determining what our future state will be," he said. So far, Wall Street is on board.Automakers are facing multiple threats to their business from nimble tech firms like Apple and Uber. It lets Ford owners remotely start their cars and make car payments. Already this year General Motors Co.8 million now, according to Boston Consulting Group. Within another few decades, fleets of self-driving taxis could replace the need for personal car ownership altogether. # In five years, 35 million people globally will be using car-sharing services, up from 5. "We want to transform, fundamentally, the relationship between an automaker and a customer. GM bought software maker Electronic Data Systems Inc. Global revenue at traditional automakers totals $2. Detroit carmakers aren't the first to offer mobility services to compete with the likes of ZipCar and Uber. GM President Dan Ammann said it can't afford to sit back and see where the market heads. Around the same time, it launched Maven, a car-sharing service. It also launched FordPass, a smartphone app that helps users find parking or share their cars."We're investing in future-proofing," says Elena Ford, who led the development of FordPass and is the great-great-granddaughter of Ford's founder.In congested and expensive cities, people are increasingly content to share cars or summon rides using their smartphones. Companies are targeting people like Shannon Serenko, 32, who works at Johnson & Johnson and lives in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. has announced a long-term alliance with ride-hailing company Lyft and started Maven. Users of the free app —who don't have to own Fords — can also reserve and pay for parking spots, get help from a live operator, rent their cars through FlightCar and earn points at partners like McDonald’s.3 trillion a year, he says; the transportation business, including taxis, buses and car-sharing, is worth $5. (Photo: AP)For Detroit, the days of simply making cars are over. German automaker Daimler AG launched Car2Go, a car-sharing service, in 2008; it now operates in 29 cities in Europe and North America. Three months later, it paid a rumored $1 billion for Cruise Automation, a startup that makes autonomous vehicle software.But after surviving the recession, Detroit is enjoying record U.4 trillion.But Fields says Ford is flexible and open to partnerships. The FordPass app was developed alongside Pivotal, a Silicon Valley software company