Lyft Sees a Future for Its Drivers in a Driverless World: Servicing Waymos

This week, Lyft riders in Nashville, Tennessee, who request a ride on the app might get matched with a new driver: a robot.

A new partnership between the ride-hail company and Waymo, the self-driving-vehicle developer, will integrate self-driving rides into Lyft’s platform. (Riders can also request a driverless ride through Waymo’s own app; service there started in April.)

The rollout marks a new milestone for Lyft, which has worked with other, smaller self-driving vehicle companies in the US, but never with a partner as big as Waymo, which operates in 14 US metros. Lyft executives also see the partnership as a continuation of a conversation the ride-hail company has been having for a few years now with its hundreds of thousands of US drivers.

Lyft, like its competitor Uber, insists that its platform will be a “hybrid network” for a long while yet, as human...

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