Waymo Diversifies in Nashville with Lyft – CleanTechnica

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Waymo keeps adding robotaxi services in more and more cities. Its habit this year has been to partner with Uber in these new markets, making Waymo robotaxi rides available exclusively on the Uber app. However, in Waymo’s newest city, Nashville, the robotaxi company is partnering with Lyft.

It makes sense. One should want competition in the market. Waymo wants to have Uber and Lyft competing for its business. It doesn’t want to be under the thumb of one major ride-hailing network. (Many also prefer Lyft for certain social and governance reasons, but I don’t think that’s what’s at play here.)

Naturally, with each new city Waymo enters, the robotaxi service should be getting better and better. Waymo users already loved the service years ago, and research last year showed that people were even willing to pay more to get a Waymo robotaxi than a human-driven taxi. So, one has to expect a positive rollout in Nashville, growing service, and then an announcement about Waymo entering yet another city.

Here’s more from Waymo on this week’s news: “Our generalizable Waymo Driver has become even more capable as we’ve scaled to hundreds of thousands of fully autonomous rides each week across five major U.S. cities. We’ll start fully autonomous operations in Nashville in the coming months, and open to public riders next year. We’ll do so by pairing our world-leading technology and seamless ride-hailing service with Lyft’s proven track record of fleet management through its Flexdrive subsidiary.

“We’re also excited to offer riders in Nashville even more ways to ride with Waymo. Riders will hail via the Waymo app, and as our service grows, riders will also be able to use the Lyft app to match with a Waymo vehicle. We’re thrilled for even more people to have access to our ride-hailing service, as we work towards our mission to be the world’s most trusted driver.”

Well, that’s an interesting twist! Instead of only being available on the partner app (like with Waymo), customers will first be able to get rides via the Waymo app, and then later via the Lyft app as well. Perhaps Lyft just needs more time, perhaps it is not being as demanding as Uber with exclusivity, or perhaps Waymo is just trying different approaches. Who knows?

Waymo has now driven more than 100 million fully autonomous miles, and data indicates its robotaxis are safer than the average human driver.

To close, here are some statements from notable people:

“As families and businesses move to Tennessee in record numbers, our state continues to lead the nation in finding innovative solutions to transportation challenges,” says Governor Bill Lee. “By leveraging private sector technologies like Waymo’s fully autonomous vehicles, we’re exploring possibilities we couldn’t achieve on our own, and further accelerating economic growth. I look forward to Waymo’s launch in The Volunteer State.”

“This partnership brings together best-in-class autonomous vehicles with best-in-class customer experience,” said Lyft CEO David Risher. “Waymo has proven that its autonomous technology works at scale. When combined with Lyft’s customer-obsession and world-class fleet management capabilities, it’s two great tastes that go great together.”

“We’re delighted to partner with Lyft and launch in Nashville next year, as we continue to scale our Waymo ride-hailing service to more people in more places,” said Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. “Lyft’s extensive fleet management capabilities through Flexdrive make them an ideal partner for expanding to Nashville. We can’t wait to introduce Music City’s residents and visitors to the convenient, consistent, safe, and magical Waymo experience.”

Okay, perhaps those statements are a bit bland and predictable, but that’s what we’ve got. Perhaps they’re more helpful to local outlets that don’t cover every Waymo expansion.

Overall, though, it is really exciting to see Waymo spreading into more and more cities. It is a bit funny that expansion into a new city is announced so far ahead of the service beginning, but I guess that’s one way to do it — and it does provide more time to gather interest from potential customers.