Greg Gardner

Detroit Free Press

If you want to be among the first to ride in General Motor's first mid-priced, long-range electric car, you might want to hail Lyft.

General Motors will deliver the first Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles to Lyft, an executive at the San Francisco ride-sharing service said Wednesday.

"Drivers on the Lyft platform will be receiving Bolts to drive first," said Emily Castor, Lyft's director of transportation. General Motors invested $500 million in Lyft earlier this year. Castor spoke at the World Mobility Leadership Forum at Metro Airport.

The Bolt is considered a breakthrough. It's a plug-in electric car that will go 238 miles on a single charge. Yet it will sell for about $37,495, almost half the cost of a Tesla Model S sedan, currently the only other electric car on sale with similar long range. Tesla's first mid-priced car, the Model 3, isn't due until next year. It's not to be confused with the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid.

Lyft will not buy the electric cars. So far, it has chosen not to own vehicles that are driven by independent contractors in about 200 U.S. cities.

The partners are expanding their Express Drive program to Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco to give more Lyft drivers the chance to rent GM vehicles on a weekly basis. The program is also available in Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Lyft drivers will have access to the GMC Terrain, Chevrolet Equinox, Malibu, Volt and, by the end of this year, the 2017 Bolt EV.

Lyft has about 315,000 drivers.

Earlier this month, Lyft president John Zimmer said that by 2021, more than half the rides Lyft provides will be in autonomous vehicles. But Castor said Wednesday that in the near term the need for drivers will grow because Lyft plans to increase the number of cities and routes it serves.