Lyft is paid per available Waymo car in Nashville and plans a much bigger fleet by year-end

Lyft expects to "significantly grow" the Waymo fleet it runs in Nashville by the end of the year, adding Waymo's latest Ojai vehicles, it said with its third-quarter results on Nov. 5. It earns from that fleet in two ways: from Waymo rides booked on the Lyft app, and from a fee for each vehicle its Flexdrive unit maintains, charges and cleans. "We get paid when those vehicles are out of the depot, so per available car," chief financial officer Michael Brous told Reuters.

That fee is the part of Lyft's robotaxi business that Waymo's own app does not threaten. A day earlier, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said Waymo would end its exclusive arrangement with Uber in Austin and Atlanta from January 2028 (Waymo and Uber), while Uber told investors its app gets US AV partners about 30% more trips per vehicle per day than first-party deployments (Uber's AV plan). Both pitches are about who brings the rider. In Nashville, Waymo rides are booked through both the Waymo and Lyft apps, and Flexdrive services the cars behind both, so Lyft collects for an available car whichever app the rider opens.

A depot with 85 staff by 2027

Flexdrive has serviced the Nashville fleet since June. Riders could book Waymo on the Lyft app from September, and in October Lyft opened a permanent 80,000-square-foot depot. Lyft says more than 85 full-time employees will work there by 2027, many of them former Lyft drivers trained through a certification program built with Waymo. Nashville is a late-night city, so most servicing happens in the early morning, between demand peaks.

Lyft plans to take the same model to Europe. It is testing Baidu's Apollo Go vehicles on public roads in London ahead of a commercial launch in 2027, and is building the operations team for its first European AV depot.

Brous declined to give the Nashville fleet size or utilization, and said robotaxis would take "a long time" to scale meaningfully. With a fee per available car, fleet size drives that revenue line, so the Ojai cars due by year-end are the first chance for Lyft to put a number on it.