Lyft soars after Waymo says they’re teaming up to conquer Nashville

Google’s Waymo announced it is expanding to Nashville next year, where it will be the first autonomous car service in the area, and it delivered a huge bump to the shares of launch partner Lyft in the process.

Shares of Lyft finished the day up over 13%, while competitor Uber (which has had a similar partnership with Waymo in other cities) finished the day down nearly 5%.

Over time, Waymo says it expects to operate “hundreds” of vehicles in Nashville, where it’s been testing since March.

Lyft will be responsible for fleet management, including vehicle maintenance and depot operations. Customers will initially hail rides through Waymo’s app, and will be able to be matched with a Waymo through Lyft’s app as well later next year.

Waymo currently operates more than 2,000 autonomous taxis in five US markets. It has plans to move into six more markets, including Nashville, and is testing in about a dozen others, too.

Waymo is now doing “hundreds of thousands” of paid, fully autonomous rides per week, which the company says is up from the quarter of a million rides per week it was delivering earlier this year.

The Takeaway

Back in 2019, Waymo conducted a small-scale pilot with Lyft in Phoenix, but as of today it had no active partnerships with Lyft before this Nashville venture. Lyft, meanwhile, has partnered with Mobileye to launch a self-driving service in Dallas next year. Lyft CEO David Risher recently told Sherwood News, “There aren’t enough self-driving cars and there’s too much demand, and the demand is growing.”

Tidbit: every time I see TikTok I think of that Kesha song!