Lyft says it earns a fee per available Waymo robotaxi in Nashville, plus Waymo rides on its app, and will significantly grow the fleet by year-end
Lyft said with its third-quarter results on Nov. 5, 2026 that it expects to "significantly grow" the Waymo robotaxi fleet it runs in Nashville by year-end, adding Waymo's latest Ojai vehicles, with airport rides "coming soon" on the Lyft app. CFO Michael Brous told Reuters Lyft is paid two ways in Nashville: through Waymo rides booked on its app, and through a fee for each available vehicle its Flexdrive unit maintains, charges and cleans. "We get paid when those vehicles are out of the depot, so per available car," he said. Brous declined to give fleet size or utilization and said robotaxis would take "a long time" to scale meaningfully. Flexdrive has serviced the fleet since June, riders could book Waymo on the Lyft app from September, and Lyft opened an 80,000-square-foot depot in October. Lyft says more than 85 full-time employees will work there by 2027, many of them former Lyft drivers. Servospace take: a per-available-car fee pays Lyft for uptime, not rides, so fleet size and availability are the numbers to watch when the Ojai cars arrive.
More on Waymo, Uber and robotaxis and self-driving vehicles.
Sources
- Reuters via Investing.com (Nov. 5, 2026): Lyft to expand Waymo robotaxi fleet in Nashville by year-end
- Lyft Q3 2026 earnings prepared remarks (Nov. 5, 2026)
- Lyft: Flexdrive by Lyft opens new Nashville AV depot (Oct. 2, 2026)
- Servospace: Waymo will drop Uber in Austin and Atlanta in January 2028
New to robots? Read our guide: How robotaxis work: Tesla vs Waymo, explained.
Summarized by Servospace from the sources above, drafted with AI help and checked against those sources before publishing. Claims are the companies' or outlets' unless we say otherwise. How we work.