Waymo has reached an agreement with the ride-hailing company Lyft to launch a robotaxi service in Nashville in 2026. The company announced it will begin testing its fleet of all-electric and autonomous Jaguar I-Pace vehicles in the Nashville area in the coming months and will open the service to the public next year.
This partnership comes as Waymo accelerates its robotaxi expansion from its initial market in Phoenix to other cities, including Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The Alphabet-owned company has also previously announced plans to bring its robotaxis to Miami, Washington D.C., Dallas, and Denver.
The deal further illustrates Waymo’s strategic shift from being a sole operator towards becoming an autonomous vehicle technology provider. Earlier this year, Waymo launched a robotaxi service with Uber in Atlanta and Austin. Under that arrangement, Waymo manages vehicle testing, roadside assistance, and certain rider support elements, while Uber handles fleet services like cleaning, maintenance, inspections, charging, and depot operations through a company called Moove Cars.
Waymo’s arrangement with Lyft in Nashville is similar. Lyft will also handle fleet services, including vehicle readiness, maintenance, infrastructure, and depot operations through its wholly owned subsidiary Flexdrive. Lyft confirmed it is investing in a purpose-built autonomous vehicle facility to support the fleet.
The Waymo-Lyft partnership in Nashville features one key difference from the company’s relationship with Uber. In Nashville, robotaxi customers will have two ways to access the service. Users will initially hail rides directly through the Waymo app. Once the service expands, Waymo will also dispatch its autonomous vehicles for matched rides on the Lyft app. This differs from the Uber partnership, where all potential customers must use the Uber app with the hope of being matched with a robotaxi instead of a human driver.
Lyft and Waymo have partnered before, though never at a large scale. In 2019, the companies linked up to bring a small number of self-driving vehicles onto the Lyft network in Phoenix as Waymo was ramping up its commercial robotaxi service.