Waymo has reached an agreement with Ride-Hailing Lyft to launch a robot service in Nashville in 2026.
The company said on Wednesday that it will start testing its fleet with electric and autonomous Jaguar i-Pace vehicles in the Nasville area in the coming months and open the service to the public next year.
The corporate relationship agreement announced on Wednesday as Waymo accelerates its expansion to the robot from the original Phoenix market in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The alphabet company has previously announced plans to bring its robbery to Miami, Washington DC, Dallas and Denver.
The deal also depicts Waymo’s desire to go beyond being a unique operator and being an autonomous vehicle technology provider. Earlier this year, Waymo started a robot service with Uber in Atlanta and Austin. Below this setting, Waymo is responsible for the test of vehicles, road assistance and some aspects of rider support, while Uber manages fleet services such as car cleaning, maintenance, inspections, charging and warehouse work through a company called Moove Cars.
Waymo’s layout with Lyft on Nashville is similar. The Lyft will also handle fleet services, such as the readiness and maintenance of vehicles, the infrastructure and warehouse work through its entirely owned FlexDrive subsidiary. Lyft said it invests in an AV installation built to support the fleet.
The Waymo-Lyft partnership in Nashville has a key difference from the company’s relationship with Uber in Atlanta and Austin. In Nashville, Robotaxi’s customers will be able to access robbery in two ways. Users will initially greet the walks directly through the Waymo app. Once the service has expanded, Waymo will also send its autonomous vehicles for matched rides in the Lyft app.
This is in contrast to her collaboration with Uber in Atlanta and Austin. In these cities, all potential customers must use the Uber application in the hope of matching a robot, not a human driver.
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Lyft and Waymo have collaborated before, though never on a scale. In 2019, Waymo connected to Lyft to bring a handful of vehicles to the Phoenix ride network as the company increased the robot trading service.
