Waymo Just Made A New Friend In Nashville, And It's Not Uber

• Waymo has started offering rides in Nashville, Tennessee via the Lyft app.
• The autonomous ride-hail company also offers rides through its own app in the city.
• Riders don't have to pick a Waymo and can choose to ride with human drivers.

Waymo is showing no signs of slowing down. The Alphabet-owned autonomous ride-hail company has started offering rides in Nashville, Tennessee, through the Lyft app, the companies said in a press release Wednesday. Waymo already serves Nashville through its own app, but teaming up with Lyft could widen its pool of potential riders.

The autonomous ride-hail industry in the U.S. is approaching an inflection point. Automakers, ride-hailing companies, and driverless-tech companies have bet billions on commercializing driverless technology, anticipating that self-driving cars will prove safer than human drivers. Tesla started rolling out its steering-wheel-free Cybercab in Austin last week, while Uber is gearing up to deploy Lucid Gravity robotaxis in the Bay Area by the end of the year.

Lyft said riders won't pay extra to get a Waymo. They just need to book a ride, whether Standard, Priority Pickup, Wait & Save, or Extra Comfort, that falls within Waymo's service area in the city. Right now, that area covers Downtown/Broadway, North Nashville/Germantown, East Nashville, Midtown, and South Nashville.

Photo by: Lyft

Jeremy Bird, Lyft's executive vice president of global growth, told Axios that the Waymo partnership in Nashville could serve as a blueprint for future roll outs in other cities. "The thing we will hold ourselves most accountable to ... is the utilization being high, regardless of what app it's on," he told the outlet. "We want this to be a long-term thing. We want you to grow with us, and we want to grow with you," he added referring to the Waymo tie-up.

But Lyft riders don’t have to pick a Waymo if they don’t want to. The Lyft app will include an opt out option for anyone who doesn't want an autonomous ride. Behind the scenes, though, the Waymos will run as a single fleet serving both Waymo and Lyft app users. That fleet is being managed by Lyft subsidiary Flexdrive, which will handle charging, cleaning, and day-to-day operations. Flexdrive is set to open an 80,000-square-foot depot in Nashville next month to support Waymos.

The team up comes at a time when Waymo's relationship with Uber is looking increasingly shaky. Waymos are currently available exclusively through the Uber app in Austin and Atlanta, but Waymo plans to end that contract by 2028 and serve riders directly through its own app in those cities, according to a Financial Times report. For its part, Uber has dozens of other AV rollouts in the works beyond Waymo, including partnerships with Rivian, Lucid, Motional, Zoox, Nissan, May Mobility, and more. The company has also in Washington, DC, that would require robotaxi companies to also operate human-driven cars. 

Photo by: Waymo

Waymo now offers fully autonomous rides, with no human safety driver on board, in 14 U.S. cities. Last week it added snowy Denver into the mix, which will be a real test of its ability to contend with harsher weather. By the end of the first quarter, the company had surpassed 500,000 weekly paid autonomous rides in the U.S. It is aiming to cross 1 million per week by year's end.

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