Waymo announced Monday that its vehicles now operate fully autonomously in Nashville, Tennessee, marking the Alphabet subsidiary's latest expansion in the competitive robotaxi market.
The Nashville deployment follows a September 2025 partnership with Lyft that established the city as the first commercial deployment of Waymo's driverless taxis on the ride-hailing platform's network.
Riders can access the service through both the Waymo app and Lyft's platform, with initial operations focused on the Waymo app before expanding to Lyft's network.
Waymo operates more than 2,500 autonomous vehicles across five major U.S. metropolitan areas, including Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta. The company has driven nearly 200 million fully autonomous miles on public roads, with data showing its technology performs significantly safer than human drivers in operational areas.
The expansion comes amid heightened investor interest in autonomous vehicle technology. Waymo recently secured $16 billion in funding that valued the company at $126 billion, nearly tripling its valuation in less than two years.
This financial backing supports Waymo's production plans, including a partnership with Magna International to double robotaxi production at their Arizona facility by the end of 2026.
Recent U.S. Senate hearings revealed that Waymo employs remote operators in the Philippines to assist vehicles in complex traffic situations.
"Fleet Response Agents provide guidance but do not remotely control vehicles, with the autonomous system retaining final authority over driving decisions," Waymo Chief Safety Officer Mauricio Peña confirmed during testimony.
The disclosure prompted concerns from lawmakers including Senator Ed Markey, who argued that "having people overseas influencing American vehicles is a safety issue." Waymo maintains that all operators undergo thorough background checks, drug testing, and driving record evaluations regardless of location.
Waymo also unveiled its new "Waymo World Model" AI simulation system, which uses generative artificial intelligence to create realistic driving scenarios for testing. The system leverages more than 50 million autonomous miles of real-world data to simulate rare but critical driving situations that might occur only once in millions of actual miles.
Waymo's Nashville expansion represents the company's continued push to transform autonomous ride-hailing into standard transportation.
