Waymo just took another step toward making driverless cars a normal part of everyday life. The Alphabet-owned company has removed human safety drivers from its autonomous vehicles testing in Nashville, which pretty much means one thing: a commercial robotaxi service is coming soon.
This isn’t exactly surprising if you’ve been following Waymo’s playbook. They’ve done this dance before in other cities, and Nashville is just the latest stop on their aggressive expansion tour. The company has been methodically testing there for months, and now they’re confident enough to let their cars roam the streets without a human babysitter behind the wheel.
The Lyft Partnership Play
Here’s where things get interesting. Waymo isn’t going solo in Nashville. They’ve teamed up with Lyft to launch the service later this year, though riders will initially need to use the Waymo app directly. Eventually, you’ll be able to hail a self-driving Waymo through Lyft’s app too, which makes sense from a business perspective. Why limit your customer base when you can tap into Lyft’s existing user network?
Lyft’s role goes beyond just being a middleman though. Their wholly owned subsidiary Flexdrive will handle all the unglamorous but crucial stuff like vehicle maintenance, charging infrastructure, and depot operations. It’s the kind of behind-the-scenes work that actually determines whether these services can scale or just remain expensive tech demos.
Waymo’s Growing Empire
The Nashville rollout is part of a much bigger picture. Waymo now operates commercial robotaxi services in six major markets: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco Bay Area, and Phoenix. That’s a pretty impressive footprint for a technology that still makes most people nervous.
But they’re not stopping there. Driverless test fleets are already running in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. Each city follows the same careful progression: manual mapping first, then testing with safety drivers, followed by driverless testing with employees, and finally public launch. It’s methodical, maybe even boring, but that’s probably the point when you’re trying to convince people that robots should drive them around.
The question isn’t really whether Waymo can launch in more cities anymore. They’ve proven they can do that. The real question is whether all this expansion actually leads to a sustainable business model or if we’re just watching a very well-funded company burn through cash while hoping the economics eventually work out.
