Lyft has begun matching riders in Nashville with driverless Waymo vehicles directly inside its app, making Nashville the first U.S. city where Waymo robotaxis are bookable through both the Waymo app and a competing ride-hailing platform simultaneously2,3.
The service went live on September 9. Riders who request a Standard, Priority Pickup, Wait & Save, or Extra Comfort trip within Waymo's central Nashville service area may be matched with an autonomous vehicle at no surcharge. Users can decline a driverless match or opt out of autonomous rides entirely. Human-driven rides continue to be available on the Lyft app. For a match to occur, the desired route must start and end within Waymo's existing service area.
The Nashville zone covers Downtown and Broadway, North Nashville and Germantown, East Nashville, Midtown, and South Nashville, an area Waymo described as roughly 60 square miles. Waymo operates more than a hundred vehicles across that zone and has been offering rides in Nashville through its own app since April.
Nashville is the second U.S. city where Lyft offers autonomous trips, following its May Mobility pilot in Midtown Atlanta. The Nashville tie-up marks the first direct partnership between Waymo and Lyft.
Lyft's subsidiary Flexdrive is handling charging, cleaning, maintenance, and depot logistics for the Waymo fleet. A purpose-built 80,000-square-foot Nashville depot is set to open in October. Lyft said Flexdrive will have more than 70 full-time roles in Nashville this year, and many of those hires are former Lyft drivers. Wired reported that roughly half of the 72 workers at the temporary depot had previously driven on Lyft's network.
ANALYSIS The fleet-services model positions Lyft differently from Uber in the robotaxi race: rather than building autonomous technology, Lyft is betting that operating and maintaining the vehicles is the higher-value layer for a ride-hailing company.
Uber currently offers Waymo rides exclusively in two U.S. cities, matching riders with Waymo vehicles at standard prices in Austin and Atlanta. Uber has said it will commit more than $10 billion over the next few years toward becoming a go-to app for hailing autonomous vehicles. That spending pledge accompanied a round of approximately 3,300 job cuts disclosed earlier this month[3]. Reuters reported in June that Waymo and Uber ended their Phoenix pilot after an intentionally limited deployment of just over a dozen vehicles.
Waymo and Lyft said availability in Nashville will increase gradually over the coming weeks. Lyft named Senthil Padmanabhan, formerly a vice president of engineering at eBay, as chief technology officer effective July 20.
Beyond Nashville, Lyft is working with Baidu to bring Apollo Go autonomous vehicles to Germany and the UK, with initial deployments planned for 2026 pending regulatory approval. Waymo confirmed on August 25 that Munich will be its first robotaxi city in the European Union, targeting a public launch by late 2027 and leaning on Germany's 2021 autonomous-driving law to clear the regulatory path.
ANALYSIS Nashville's dual-app availability gives Waymo a live comparison of rider demand and fleet utilization across two competing platforms in the same city, a data set neither company has had before.
The Lyft-Waymo partnership was first announced a year ago. Lyft's share price closed at $16.24 on September 8.