Waymo Is on Lyft Now, and Uber's Exclusivity Is Running Out

As of September 9, a Lyft rider in central Nashville can get a Waymo instead of a human driver. Riders who request Standard, Priority Pickup, Wait & Save, or Extra Comfort are matched with a Waymo at no extra cost when the trip starts and ends inside Waymo's service area: Downtown and Broadway, North Nashville and Germantown, East Nashville, Midtown and South Nashville. Riders can turn down a driverless match or opt out entirely.

The same cars stay available in Waymo's own app. That makes Nashville the first city where a Waymo robotaxi can be hailed from two competing apps at once.

Lyft's fleet unit, Flexdrive, handles the physical side: charging, cleaning and maintenance, from an 80,000-square-foot depot opening in October with more than 70 full-time jobs. Bloomberg, via Transport Topics, puts Waymo's Nashville fleet at more than 100 vehicles across about 60 square miles. Lyft says availability will grow over the coming weeks.

On its own, this is a modest launch in a mid-sized market. What makes it matter is what's happening to Uber at the same time.

The exclusivity era is ending

Waymo's biggest ride-hail relationship has been with Uber, which has held exclusive rights to Waymo rides in Austin and Atlanta. In July, Waymo told Uber it will launch its own app in both cities in January 2028. Under the existing contract, the current fleet stays on Uber through at least May 2028. An Uber spokesperson confirmed the notice and said the change frees Uber to bring other autonomous providers onto its platform in those cities. Uber shares fell more than 4% on the news.

The split wasn't friendly. Uber complained about economics it called unsustainable. It also cited safety problems, including robotaxis driving into flooded roads despite a software recall and illegally passing school buses in Austin, and said it learned about some incidents from the press. Waymo blamed Uber's routing for one of the complaints, a cluster of empty cars circling a cul-de-sac in Atlanta. Separately, the Waymo–Uber arrangement in Phoenix ended quietly in June after nearly three years.

Taken together, these are one story. Waymo started out needing a ride-hail partner for demand. It is now big enough to treat that partner as optional. It was already running service in 11 U.S. metros in July and, as of this summer, delivered more than 500,000 paid rides a week. Nashville shows the new default: Waymo's app first, then any other app that can send it riders, with no exclusivity for anyone.

What Lyft actually bought

For Lyft, this is its first commercial robotaxi deployment with fully driverless vehicles, according to TechCrunch. Lyft has partnered on autonomy for years: Motional in Las Vegas, May Mobility in Atlanta, Baidu in London and an earlier Waymo link in Phoenix. In 2021 it sold its in-house self-driving unit, Level 5, to Toyota's Woven Planet for $550 million. The Nashville partnership was announced on September 17, 2025, with Waymo's app launching first and Lyft dispatch promised "later in 2026." Lyft hit that date.

The more telling detail is who does what. Waymo owns the cars and the driving. Lyft owns the depot. Flexdrive's role is the dull, labor-heavy part of running a robotaxi fleet: keeping cars charged, clean and ready.

That's a different bet from the one Lyft made with Level 5. It isn't trying to own the autonomy stack anymore. It's trying to be the company AV developers can't easily replace in a city, because it runs the depots and brings the riders. Jeremy Bird, Lyft's EVP of growth, told TechCrunch the company went into 2026 focused on Nashville and London, and that "next year what you'll see is more diversification" of its partnerships.

The app becomes a sales channel

The long-run consequence is uncomfortable for both ride-hail companies.

When a rider taps "Standard" and a Waymo shows up at the same price, the app has done its job as a dispatcher. But the thing that got the rider there, the car and the driving, belongs to someone else. And that someone else also runs a rival app, taking the same bookings with no middleman.

That's the dynamic Uber is walking into in Austin and Atlanta, and Lyft is agreeing to it up front in Nashville. The ride-hail apps still own two scarce assets: a huge installed base of riders, and the ability to blend human drivers and robotaxis so peak demand gets covered. Lyft's head of drivers, Yuko Yamazaki, made exactly that pitch in the launch release, saying Lyft is strongest when "autonomous and human drivers grow side by side."

That argument holds for as long as robotaxi fleets can't cover peak demand alone. It weakens with every car Waymo adds.

What to watch

Match rate. Lyft hasn't said what share of eligible Nashville trips actually get a Waymo. If it stays small, this is a pilot with a press release. If it climbs, Waymo has a second demand source it doesn't depend on.

Who gets Austin and Atlanta in 2028. Uber now has room to bring rival AV providers into two cities where Waymo already has riders' attention. Lyft, having shown it can run a Waymo depot, is an obvious candidate for Waymo's non-exclusive distribution there.

Pricing. "No additional cost" is a launch promise, not a business model. Once a company that owns the car can also sell the ride directly, the percentage it gives up to someone else's app is the number that decides who keeps the margin.