As both Uber Technologies (UBER) and Lyft, Inc. (LYFT) look to build market share in the burgeoning U.S. robotaxi space, both have a common partner that’s helping them get there: Alphabet’s (GOOG) Waymo.
Uber has previously teamed up with Waymo to bring autonomous ride-hailing to Austin and Atlanta and now Lyft has joined forces with the Alphabet unit to do the same in Nashville.
Lyft announced on Wednesday that through its partnership with Waymo, it would begin deploying autonomous ride-hailing on its app in Nashville in 2026.
Riders will initially be able to hail the autonomous vehicles (AVs) through Waymo’s app and then Waymo will dispatch its fleet on Lyft’s app later in the year. Lyft will also be building an AV fleet management facility in Nashville that will include charging and vehicle service capabilities.
The vehicle servicing for Waymo’s fleet will be handled by Lyft’s subsidiary Flexdrive, which will provide maintenance, depot operations and other services for Waymo’s AV fleet.
"Waymo has proven that its autonomous technology works at scale,” Lyft CEO David Risher said in a statement. “When combined with Lyft's customer-obsession and world-class fleet management capabilities, it's two great tastes that go great together."
Lyft said that by having Waymo’s AVs service riders alongside its broader driver community, it will help “usher in Lyft’s vision of a human-centered, hybrid future.”
Shares of Lyft jumped 13.1% on Wednesday on news of the partnership.
Waymo leads robotaxi race for now
As the competition in the autonomous vehicle space in the U.S. gains steam, Waymo has built an early lead based on its status as being first-to-market with AVs.
The company released a report on Tuesday indicating that its fleet has now driven 96 million miles without a human driver across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin.
And in what it called “a major milestone,” the company said on Tuesday that it has received a pilot permit that will allow it to deploy commercial operations at San Francisco International Airport.
The program will initially begin by servicing SFO employees before being offered to the airport’s customers.
While Waymo has built out a market share advantage in the AV space in these early days, it’s far from certain that it will maintain that lead as rivals begin ramping up their own offerings. In fact, AVs currently account for less than 1% of the rideshare market, as Bloomberg reports, which means it’s still much too early to declare winners and losers.
Although it counts Waymo as one of its partners, Uber nonetheless announced in July that it is teaming up with EV startup Lucid (LCID) and self-driving tech company Nuro to launch a global robotaxi program exclusively for the Uber app.
As part of this partnership, Uber plans to deploy 20,000 Lucid vehicles equipped with Nuro Driver technology over the next six years.
And there’s of course Tesla (TSLA) and Elon Musk’s dream of having his company’s robotaxis reach "half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year" in 2026.
Although that goal at the moment seems far-fetched – especially since Tesla’s robotaxi business consists of only a small fleet in Austin thus far, the company has recently received a permit to begin testing its robotaxi fleet in Nevada.
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