Waymo robotaxis land on the Lyft app in Nashville in a driverless first for the company

Waymo's driverless robotaxis are now bookable through the Lyft app in Nashville. According to TechCrunch, the launch marks the first time Lyft has offered a commercial robotaxi service using vehicles with no human operator behind the wheel — a notable milestone for a company that once built its own autonomous technology, then sold it.

How the Nashville service works

Riders in Nashville can hail a Waymo in two ways: directly through the Waymo app, or through the Lyft app, which matches them with a Waymo depending on availability, TechCrunch reports. The division of labor between the two companies is specific. Waymo supplies the driverless vehicles, while Lyft handles fleet services — vehicle readiness, maintenance, infrastructure and depot operations — through Flexdrive, its wholly owned subsidiary.

A winding road to driverless rides

Lyft's relationship with autonomy goes back years. The company has previously partnered with Aptiv (now Motional) in Las Vegas, May Mobility in Atlanta, Baidu in London and Waymo in Phoenix. It also spent four years and millions of dollars developing in-house autonomous vehicle technology through its Level 5 division, only to sell that unit to Toyota's Woven Planet Holdings for $550 million in 2021, during a period of consolidation across the young industry, TechCrunch notes.

Lyft then paused its AV efforts to concentrate on its core ride-hailing business, though it never dismissed the idea entirely. The Nashville launch is the result of that renewed approach: the company's first genuine entry into commercial driverless service.

Lyft's plans for expansion

TechCrunch interviewed Jeremy Bird, Lyft's executive vice president of growth, who oversees the company's international, luxury and autonomous vehicle plans. Bird did not specify when or where more robotaxis would appear on the Lyft app, but said the company entered 2026 focused on its Waymo partnership in Nashville and its Baidu partnership in London, where commercial service has not yet launched.

"I think next year what you'll see is more diversification of that," Bird told TechCrunch, adding that this would ideally include expanding work with both partners. "I think next year will be a big year for us."

International markets appear central to those plans. Bird described London as a "fascinating market" and repeatedly framed Lyft as a global company — a shift from a few years ago, when the business was focused on the United States. When evaluating new markets, Lyft is prioritizing places where it can run a hybrid network of autonomous and human-driven vehicles from the outset, and where regulation already allows AVs. "We are a global company becoming more global, which is important for us," Bird said. "And AVs will be the way we think about the future."

Why it matters

The launch illustrates how the robotaxi business is sorting itself into distinct roles: technology developers like Waymo provide the autonomy, while ride-hailing platforms provide demand, fleet management and depot infrastructure. For Lyft, which exited AV development in 2021, partnerships offer a route back into the market without the enormous cost of rebuilding autonomous technology from scratch. The Flexdrive fleet-operations role also gives Lyft a concrete job in the ecosystem rather than serving as merely a booking channel for someone else's cars. Bird's comments suggest Nashville is a template rather than a one-off, with more cities, more partners and a preference for markets where regulators have already opened the door to driverless vehicles — and where autonomous cars will initially operate alongside, rather than instead of, human drivers.