Waymo Robotaxis Are Now Inside the Lyft App — But Only in One City
One Waymo fleet now answers requests from both the Waymo and Lyft apps, with Lyft's Flexdrive running the depot. Riders pay no premium — and can opt out of driverless trips entirely.
Waymo's driverless cars can now be booked through the Lyft app in Nashville, Lyft and Waymo said in a joint announcement on Wednesday. It's the first city where a single Waymo fleet answers requests from two apps at once — Waymo's own and Lyft's — and the first time Lyft riders anywhere can be matched with a Waymo.
There's no upcharge and no special button. Riders who request a Standard, Priority Pickup, Wait & Save, or Extra Comfort trip that starts and ends inside the Lyft-side service area — Downtown/Broadway, North Nashville/Germantown, East Nashville, Midtown, and South Nashville — may get a Waymo instead of a human driver. Anyone who'd rather not ride driverless can decline the match or switch the option off entirely.
Availability starts small and is meant to grow over the coming weeks. The cars are dispatched from one pool across both networks, so the same vehicle can carry a Waymo-app rider on one trip and a Lyft rider on the next. Human drivers keep serving the area alongside them.
Lyft runs the depot, not just the storefront
What sets Nashville apart is how much of the operation Lyft actually owns. Its Flexdrive subsidiary handles fleet management — charging, cleaning, maintenance, and depot work — and opens a purpose-built, 80,000-square-foot facility in October. The site accounts for more than 70 new full-time jobs this year, from technicians to fleet operations leads and service coordinators. In an April post, Flexdrive said half of the roles filled so far had gone to current or former Lyft drivers.
That's a different shape from Waymo's arrangement with Uber. In Austin and Atlanta, Waymo's cars are available only through the Uber app, and the physical fleet work on Uber's side is handled by an outside operator. In Nashville, the rideshare partner built the depot and hired the crew — and still doesn't get the cars to itself.
Where Uber fits
The launch lands while Waymo's Uber partnership is being unwound. In July, Uber confirmed to CNBC that Waymo had given notice it intends to launch its own app in Austin and Atlanta in January 2028, which would end its exclusivity there; the current fleet stays on Uber through at least May 2028 under the existing contract. Wednesday's announcement doesn't mention Uber, and Nashville was structured as a two-app market from the start: the September 2025 partnership announcement already described a marketplace serving riders on both platforms.
Waymo opened Nashville to the public on April 7 in its own app, with an initial 60-square-mile service area and testing under way at Nashville International Airport. The Lyft-side zone is described as central Nashville, and the companies haven't said whether the two maps line up. Nicole Gavel, Waymo's head of business development, framed the tie-up as more ways in for riders, "whether they're booking directly on the Waymo app or getting matched on Lyft."
What's still unknown: neither company has disclosed how many cars are in Nashville, what share of trips will come through Lyft rather than the Waymo app, or whether the two-app setup is coming to other cities. The next checkpoints are the depot opening in October and any fleet numbers that arrive with it. For how Waymo's service compares with Tesla's Cybercab on price, wait times, and cities, see our Cybercab vs. Waymo comparison.
