Waymo just made Nashville the 11th city where you can actually hail a driverless car, and honestly, it’s a pretty big deal for how fast autonomous vehicle technology is moving from sci-fi fantasy to everyday life. The company has been quietly testing its self-driving software in Nashville for months, and now they’re officially opening their robotaxi service to the public, though they’re doing it slowly and thoughtfully to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Here’s what makes the Nashville launch interesting: Waymo partnered with Lyft instead of Uber, which means you’ve got options. You can hail a Waymo robotaxi directly through the Waymo app, and once things scale up, you’ll also be able to request one through Lyft. This is different from how Waymo operates in Austin and Atlanta, where you have to use the Uber app and hope you get matched with a robot instead of a human driver. It’s basically giving Nashville riders more flexibility in how they get around.

Waymo is starting with a 60-square-mile service area and has dozens of vehicles ready to go. The company is rolling out access in waves rather than flipping a switch for everyone at once. This measured approach makes sense, they want to make sure the experience is solid before they flood the system with requests.

Behind the scenes, Waymo’s strategy is becoming clearer: they want to be the technology provider, not necessarily the company managing all the day-to-day operations. In Nashville, Lyft’s subsidiary Flexdrive is handling the boring but crucial stuff like vehicle maintenance, charging infrastructure, and depot operations. In other cities, Waymo partners with different companies to manage fleets. Avis handles that in Dallas, while an African fintech company called Moove manages operations in Phoenix and Miami. This approach lets Waymo focus on what they do best, the self-driving technology itself.

The expansion is happening at a pretty wild pace. Waymo now has robotaxi services running in ten other cities: Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio, and the San Francisco Bay Area. And with $16 billion in fresh funding, they’re clearly not planning to slow down anytime soon.

What’s really happening here is that self-driving cars are slowly becoming normalized. A few years ago, the idea of getting into a driverless car would’ve felt like stepping into the future. Now it’s becoming just another transportation option in major cities. Nashville’s launch is another brick in that wall, one more city where autonomous vehicles are part of the ride-hailing ecosystem.