Lyft & GM Roll Out Car Rental Program; Glass Goes From Clear to Opaque in a Second

A major change for Lyft, as their partnership with GM bears fruit. Reuters.com says General Motors will begin supplying rental cars, so that Lyft drivers will no longer have to own a car. For starters, GM will provide a fleet of 125 Chevrolet Equinoxes in the Chicago area by month’s end. Drivers can rent the cars for up to eight weeks. Depending on how many rides drivers complete, the cost will range from $99 a week plus 20 cents per mile to free for drivers who complete at least 65 trips a week. Lyft and GM will pay for maintenance and insurance.

Those quickie blind making companies are going to be gnashing their teeth. Cnet.com reports that scientists at Harvard have developed ‘tunable glass,’ which can go from clear to opaque in less than a second. The problem up to now has been that this type of pane has been difficult to make and expensive. The new way has a sheet of glass sandwiched between two sheets of clear, soft elastomer, sprayed with a coat of silver nanowires. Turn on the electrical current, and presto….it turns opaque. They are working on making it turn with less current at this point. One does wonder if all the windows would turn back to clear with a power failure. You might not want to walk around naked during a storm!