EVwire brief: Nashville riders can now be matched with fully autonomous Waymo vehicles through the Lyft app, making it the first market where Waymo robotaxis are available on both the Waymo and Lyft platforms.
Rides come at no additional cost. Standard, Priority Pickup, Wait & Save, and Extra Comfort trips are all eligible, with the service area covering Downtown/Broadway, North Nashville/Germantown, East Nashville, Midtown, and South Nashville.
Lyft announced the program on LinkedIn:
Lyft's Head of Rideshare, Sid Patil, said the integration was a natural next step:
Nashville riders have been quick to embrace autonomous vehicles as part of how they get around the city. Adding Waymo vehicles to our marketplace is a natural fit. Lyft and Waymo are joining hands to bring this amazing piece of technology to more riders in a seamless way.
Lyft and Waymo are dispatching vehicles from a single fleet dynamically across both networks, so the same robotaxi might serve a Waymo app rider one trip and a Lyft rider the next. Riders can decline an autonomous match or opt out entirely; human drivers continue to serve the full Nashville area.
Waymo opened access to its vehicles to all riders in Nashville back in June.
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On the ground, Lyft's subsidiary Flexdrive is handling fleet management for the Nashville operation. A purpose-built 80,000-square-foot depot is set to open in October, bringing more than 70 new full-time roles to Nashville. Many of the new hires are coming from Lyft's own driver network, filling positions as technicians, fleet operations leads, and service coordinators.
Waymo's Nicole Gavel, who leads business development and strategic partnerships, said the Lyft partnership fits into the company's broader scaling playbook:
Our goal is to bring the safety, reliability, and magic of the Waymo Driver to as many people as possible. Partnering with Lyft gives Nashvillians even more ways to experience fully autonomous rides, whether they're booking directly on the Waymo app or getting matched on Lyft, as we scale our fleet across Music City.
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It won’t be surprising if the Ojai eventually makes it to Nashville as well.
Lyft's Head of Driver, Yuko Yamazaki, framed the expansion as additive rather than competitive with human drivers:
Nashville is a hub for travelers, event goers, and visitors, and our drivers here deliver a level of hospitality and service I'm incredibly proud of. Demand in this city keeps climbing, and I believe we're strongest in serving more riders when autonomous vehicles and human drivers grow side by side.
Context:
Waymo has been on a steady expansion tear through 2026, now operating in more than 14 US cities with international expansion underway. But Nashville holds a unique distinction as it is the first market where Waymo's fleet is accessible through a third-party ride-hailing service alongside Waymo's own app. That dual-platform model could very well be a template for how the company might scale into new cities more quickly, piggybacking on an existing ride-hail network's user base rather than building demand from scratch.
The fleet itself is evolving too. We recently covered the Ojai robotaxi appearing in silver, a departure from the now-familiar blue. Waymo's purpose-built Ojai, manufactured by Zeekr and integrated by Magna in Mesa, Arizona, uses the sixth-generation Waymo Driver system with 13 cameras, six radar sensors, and four LiDAR units. As of mid-August, more than 950 Ojai vehicles have been spotted at Waymos’s Mesa facility.
Source: Lyft
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