Waymo Hooks Up With Lyft in The Music City… Giving Flexdrive One Last Shot at Relevance

If the robotaxi industry were a game of RISK, Waymo already controls North America, Europe, and Asia, while everyone else is stuck rolling dice just to keep a single troop alive in Madagascar.

After partnering with Uber to get its robotaxis in Atlanta and Austin... now they've decided to open up shop in a new market that's best known for "woo-hoo girls" running around downtown during their bachelorette parties, country music with trap beats, a diabolically bad football team, and the best hot chicken on the planet (shoutout Hattie B’s). You guessed it. Waymo is putting on its boots and going to Nashville, Tennessee. Yeehaw, y’all.

As of today, Waymo’s playing the field and dating both Uber and Lyft. Uber got the Waymo hookup in Austin and Atlanta. Now Lyft is getting its turn with a brand-new commercial deal to bring the robo-rides to Music City next year.

(Source: CNBC)

Waymo and Lyft are calling this a “multi-year strategic partnership” which really means that riders will be able to hail Waymo robotaxis via the Waymo One app, and eventually through Lyft too. So what exactly is Lyft bringing to this partnership aside from the app to actually book the ride? Well actually quite a bit. Lyft will handle the behind-the-scenes operations… things like maintenance, charging infrastructure, vehicle readiness, and depot logistics.

Ironically enough, they’ll be managing all of this through Flexdrive, the vehicle rental platform Lyft acquired back in 2020 during its brief attempt to compete head-to-head with Uber. Once a punchline, Flexdrive is being rewritten as Lyft’s pilot project for autonomy. Shareholders are going bananas… Lyft’s stock spiked 10% on the announcement… which now puts it up 64% for the year.

As for Waymo, like Napoleon in his prime… they’ve already conquered Phoenix, SF, LA, Austin, and Atlanta. Nashville is just another pin in the map. Miami, D.C., Dallas, and Denver are next on the hit list. And as of today, they’ve clocked 10+ million paid rides. So this Nashville news is truly just another Wednesday for them.

I don’t think it’s crazy to say that unlike all of their competition (Amazon, Tesla, etc) Waymo isn’t testing robotaxis anymore… they’re dominating the entire board. And they’re doing it without picking favorites. By working with both Uber and Lyft, they’re getting access to massive customer bases without the headache of actually owning the relationship. It’s kind of like Airbnb letting you book homes without having to clean them. Genius… until the customer complains, and you’re like, “lol, talk to the host.”

And if you’re in Nashville next year and a minivan pulls up without a driver… don’t freak out. Just get in, cue up some Morgan Wallen, and pray the AI doesn’t take you to Memphis by accident.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Google, Uber, Tesla, and Amazon as mentioned in the article.