Image Credit: Waymo / Facebook
The Tennessee Conservative [By Adelia Kirchner] –
A “fully autonomous ride-hailing service” is coming to Nashville through a new partnership between rideshare service Lyft and Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company.
“We’re on our way to Music City!” Waymo announced on Wednesday. “Our generalizable Waymo Driver has become even more capable as we’ve scaled to hundreds of thousands of fully autonomous rides each week across five major U.S. cities.”
Operations will begin in Nashville over the next several months and the driverless rideshare service is expected to be available to public riders in 2026.
“We’re delighted to partner with Lyft and launch in Nashville next year, as we continue to scale our Waymo ride-hailing service to more people in more places,” Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said. “Lyft’s extensive fleet management capabilities through Flexdrive make them an ideal partner for expanding to Nashville. We can’t wait to introduce Music City’s residents and visitors to the convenient, consistent, safe, and magical Waymo experience.”
Waymo says they will be pairing their “world-leading” technology and “seamless ride-hailing service” with Lyft’s “proven track record of fleet management through its Flexdrive subsidiary.”
Once the service is open to the public, Nashville riders will be able to order a driverless vehicle through either the Waymo app or the Lyft app.
“This partnership brings together best-in-class autonomous vehicles with best-in-class customer experience,” stated Lyft CEO David Risher. “Waymo has proven that its autonomous technology works at scale.“
When combined with Lyft’s customer-obsession and world-class fleet management capabilities, it’s two great tastes that go great together.”
Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) called the partnership an “innovative solution” to the transportation challenges faced by Tennessee as the population continues to increase.
“As families and businesses move to Tennessee in record numbers, our state continues to lead the nation in finding innovative solutions to transportation challenges,” said Lee. “By leveraging private sector technologies like Waymo’s fully autonomous vehicles, we’re exploring possibilities we couldn’t achieve on our own, and further accelerating economic growth. I look forward to Waymo’s launch in The Volunteer State.”
Based on Waymo’s safety data gathered by over 100 million “fully autonomous miles” driven on public roads, the company claims their technology is “significantly safer than human drivers” and is “already making roads safer” in their areas of operation.
According to WSMV Channel 4 News, Waymo’s white self-driving cars have been driving Nashville’s roads for over a year with humans behind the wheel so that the cars can learn the roads and a human driver is there to take control if needed.
A Waymo spokesperson stated that their vehicles will start driving the roads without humans behind the wheel over the coming months, adding that the vehicles are able to operate at all hours and for much longer than a human can safely drive.
However, Waymo’s safety data has been called into question through an investigation by WSMV sister station, Arizona’s Family which found that Waymo’s data did not include any cases in which a “confused” Waymo vehicle caused other vehicles to crash but did not crash itself.
“A six-month review of police reports on Waymo crashes in the Phoenix area uncovered several crashes where the Waymo vehicle was at fault,” WSMV Channel 4 News reported, “including driverless cars crossing the double yellow line and hitting other cars head-on.”
This is not the first time that a driverless vehicle service has announced plans to come to Nashville.
Back in July of 2023, General Motors’ subsidiary Cruise, announced plans to bring their driverless vehicle “robotaxi” service to Nashville.
At that point, the company was operating in San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Miami.
Cruise’s idea was that “if we can make Avs work in a city like SF – with its fog, hills & traffic – they’ll work just about anywhere.”
But the company was not able to operate commercially in San Francisco due to the California Public Utilities Commission not approving a final permit.
The company’s permits would go on to be suspended by the California Department of Motor Vehicles which deemed the driverless vehicles “not safe for the public’s operation” after a pedestrian was left critically injured in a San Franscisco accident involving a Cruise driverless vehicle.
General Motors shut Cruise down in late 2024 following a series of these kinds of setbacks as well as a nationwide pause in operations in 2023.
About the Author: Adelia Kirchner is a Tennessee resident and reporter for the Tennessee Conservative. Currently the host of Subtle Rampage Podcast, she has also worked for the South Dakota State Legislature and interned for Senator Bill Hagerty’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee. You can reach Adelia at adelia@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
