VENTURE CAPITAL POST

General Motors Co.is planning to invest to make a very big investment with the Toledo Transmission.

App-based ride-hailing service Lyft announced its new initiative with GM, a car rental program called Express Drive. Aiming to grow its base of drivers, the new program will allow drivers to apply without owning a qualifying car but renting in instead.

General Motors is moving forward to compete in the autonomous car markets. The giant automaker has acquired a driverless cars software maker, Cruise Automation, for reportedly more than $1 billion.

General Motors discontinued and then sold its Saab and Saturn brands. Ironically, it made an announcement today that these cars from both brands consist of parts that could explode from the Takata airbag. The said cars’ manufacturing date was way back 2003 and a total of 180,000 vehicles are recalled in the U.S. while 20,000 units are from Canada.

GM is about to roll out yet another recall program, this time affecting 47300 vehicles in North America. The leading automaker has found issues with the brake nut that could lead to failure of this vital function. This is nowhere close to the first time the company called back its cars for some fix, and seems it won't be the last either.

Ford is reportedly intending to start a new plant in Mexico with an aim to boost its production capacity of US plants. This move by the company reflects its rival General Motors' investment plan of $5 billion to multiply the production capacity in Mexico within 2018.

Ford Motor said its fourth-quarter earnings beat Wall Street analysts' expectations and reiterated 2016 pre-tax profit forecast to be identical to or greater than the previous year.

Toyota Motor is seriously contemplating a buyout of Daihatsu Motor Co., which would give the company direct access to Daihatsu’s 660 cc mini vehicles. This investment would fetch Toyota great returns in the emerging markets and also enable leveraging of the low-cost production model that has long been Daihatsu’s competitive advantage.

Ford Motor has announced on Monday that they would be exiting the Japanese and Indonesian markets by the end of this year as the governments are running a very "closed" market, protecting domestic sales over the international ones. The automaker has been unable to increase their sales or sustain profits under such circumstances. They said that the employees have already been informed and they would be providing detailed explanations regarding post-sale services like servicing and providing new car parts to its customers very soon.

GM's Maven is set to revolutionize the car-sharing and ride-sharing services with an hourly rate of $6. This has been quite an aggressive move from the conventional car-maker. However, the company is pretty confident that car-sharing section is now ready for a highly personalized, easy-to-use mobility service, which it plans to provide through its fleet of Chevrolet Spark and Tahoe.

After acquiring Lyft Inc, GM has also purchased ride hailing pioneer, Sidecar. The acquired entity has been tattering in consecutive years for ever growing competitions with rivals like Uber and Lyft. With the acquiring, GM now will be able to play a more active role in relative fields with the new two subsidiaries.

General Motors' Buick brand unveiled during the Monday Detroit Auto Show its new sporty Avista concept car, which pumps a 400 horsepower.

BMW North America faces a penalty of up to $40 million by U.S. auto-safety regulators for recall failures. According to US News, U.S. safety regulators have fined penalty with German automaker BMW AG with $40 million for a reason of not fast fixation of their Mini brand cars that failed federal crash tests.

Faraday Future comes as a new challenger for Tesla in building electric car. The Chinese-backed startup company has invested $1 billion to build factory in America. Other than electric car, Faraday Futures also prepares "rolling smartphone" as a different business model in automotive industry.

General Motors promised The United Auto Workers union a $1.9-billion investment in US operations that would add 3,300 union jobs in the country under a proposed four-year contract.