Waymo Partners With Rival Uber In Phoenix For Rides And Food

Waymo and Uber have announced they will partner in Waymo’s expanded Phoenix service area. This means that users of the Uber app will summon up a ride, and they may get the option to select having that ride in a Waymo with nobody up front. They will pay the Uber price, though because Waymo uses luxury electric Jaguars, they may show up at the UberX, Uber Comfort, Uber Green and Uber Comfort Electric pricing levels.

In addition, people ordering food with Uber Eats may find a Waymo bringing the food. In that case, the restaurant will need to have an employee put the food in the Waymo, and the customer will have to go to the curb — normally an Uber Eats driver does those tasks, and it remains to be seen if restaurants will be diligent about going out, particularly if the Waymo doesn’t find a good waiting spot.

There are several interesting aspects to this deal. First, Uber is a competitor of Waymo, and former lawsuit adversary, and even has a large investment in and partnership with Aurora. Secondly, Waymo has been changing prices, but now the Waymo ride will be available through many pricing levels — the Uber ones, and Waymo’s own. Only a subset of the Waymo vehicles will do Uber work. The partnership starts later this year and is scheduled to run for years.

Rivals

As a Robotaxi company, Waymo is a competitor to Uber, and plans to eventually supplant it, with cheaper service, or so it has been assumed. Uber used to have its own robotaxi development unit. This was shut down and sold off to Aurora for stock after Uber ATG fatally struck a pedestrian due to safety driver negligence in Tempe (on a street that is now in Waymo’s service area.)

In addition, Uber ATG’s self-driving project was led for a time by Anthony Levandowski, who left Waymo and faced a major lawsuit and received a criminal conviction for appropriating secrets from Waymo. He escaped jail time only through a pardon from President Trump, but the lawsuit between Waymo, Uber and Levandowski was bitter and expensive and Waymo prevailed.

When Uber ATG was transferred to Aurora, it included terms that Aurora would provide robotaxi technology to Uber, which values it highly. Uber doesn’t own its cars or drive them today, so there is no reason they can’t use technology and vehicles from multiple other firms, but Aurora was the chosen pick. Of course, Aurora does not have any form of robotaxi service in operation at present. Uber has also partnered with Motional (a joint venture of Hyundai and Aptiv) to use their robotaxis to do rides and Uber Eats. Motional vehicles still have a safety driver in them.

Pricing

Waymo has been experimenting with pricing, though at present its prices follow a formula similar to Uber, sometime less, and reportedly sometimes more. With the new partnership, riders will be able to shop the price on both apps. In a future article, I will outline the issues with Waymo’s price experiments and what they need to do next. Generally, nobody created robotaxi service just to be a cheaper Uber. Recently, Waymo has made emphasis on ways it is superior, including the added privacy of having the car all to yourself. Uber drivers may find it odd to be competing next to robots in the Uber app.