GM wants you to shop from your car for food, gasoline and hotels

General Motors is now providing the ability to buy coffee, donuts, make restaurant and hotel reservations from the road using a dashboard touchscreen.

The app, called Marketplace, is rolling out this month in all 2017 and 2018 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac models.

That means about 1.9 million vehicles in the U.S. can now have access to the service. Santiago Chamorro, GM vice president for global connected customer experience, said it will be available on nearly 4 million vehicles over the next 18 months. 

The app, which is represented by the letter m in brackets, [m], is free, but the variety of vendors is somewhat limited at the beginning. There are six categories: "Fuel Up," "Find Parking," "Order Food," "Reserve Table," "Reserve Hotel," "Shop for Car."

So far, GM has agreements with Shell and Exxon Mobil for the fuel app; with Parkopedia for services that locate parking spots; Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Applebee's, Wingstop, IHOP and delivery.com for food; TGI Fridays for table reservations, and Priceline for hotel reservations.

The "Shop for Car" category connects with GM dealers and notifies vehicle owners of discounts on parts and accessories, and eventually will include services such as oil changes or tire rotations, Chamorro said. 

"We will be adding more vendors and we will improve it," Chamorro said. 

Some, but not all, of the participating merchants have agreed to share revenue with GM  from additional sales that can be accurately traced to Marketplace users. No private customer data will be shared with vendors without a customer's consent, he said.

The app is not dependent on GM's subscription-based OnStar roadside assistance and customer support service. Neither is it dependent on outside smartphone software such as Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. 

Drivers can and will use the app while driving, a capability that may draw criticism from safety advocates.

David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor who has studied how consumers use infotainment systems, released a study in October that many features in 2017 vehicles are so distracting they should not be enabled while a vehicle is in motion. 

“With the best intentions, we will put some technology in the car that we think will make the car safer, but people being people will use that technology in ways that we don’t anticipate,” Strayer said in a statement describing his research. 

To minimize the time needed to interact with any one function, GM designers limited the choices on the Marketplace app. For example, if a customer calls up Dunkin Donuts, she will not see the entire menu, but instead just the last two or three orders she placed there. 

Chamorro said software developers adhered to industry guidelines to combat distracted driving, and GM designs such systems to minimize manual interactions with the touchscreen. 

Data from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and the Urban Institute published in 2015 found the average American spends 46 minutes per day driving.

"Leveraging connectivity and our unique data capabilities, we have an opportunity to make every trip more productive and give our customers time back," Chamorro said.