EVwire brief: Flexdrive, Lyft's fleet management subsidiary, has opened an 80,000-square-foot depot in Nashville built to service, charge and maintain autonomous vehicles, with Waymo robotaxis set to start rolling into the site on October 12.
The facility is equipped with dozens of fast chargers capable of supporting hundreds of AVs, maintenance bays set up for high-voltage repairs, and secure parts storage. Flexdrive credited support from the city for helping it move quickly on an investment of this size in Tennessee.
The depot is bringing more than 70 full-time jobs to Nashville this year, spanning technicians, fleet operations managers and associates, repair coordinators and maintenance specialists, with the potential for hundreds more in the coming years.
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Current and former Lyft drivers get priority for interviews, and Flexdrive is offering on-the-job training in vehicle systems, sensor calibration and fleet operations, along with full benefits from day one.
Flexdrive CEO John Parks framed the facility as a jobs story as much as an AV one, stating that the facility is proof that the growth of autonomous vehicles creates driver-adjacent careers.
Flexdrive is already looking past the first site. As the Nashville fleet grows, the company said it is exploring additional locations in the city to cut rider wait times and keep congestion down on local roads.
Lyft also marked the ribbon-cutting on LinkedIn:
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Context:
The depot is the ground-level piece of Lyft's Waymo partnership in Nashville. In September, Lyft riders in Nashville started getting matched with Waymo robotaxis, making the city the first market where Waymo's vehicles are available on both the Waymo and Lyft apps. The two companies dispatch a single fleet across both networks, with Flexdrive handling day-to-day fleet operations.
Nashville is one part of a broader AV push at Lyft, both in the United States and abroad. In June, the company made a multi-sensor setup mandatory for driverless cars on its platform, and in July, Freenow by Lyft put Baidu Apollo Go robotaxis on London streets.
Source: Lyft and Lyft on LinkedIn
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