A Waymo autonomous taxi. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
key takeaways:
- Uber shut down its Waymo robotaxi offering in Phoenix last month after a limited deployment on its app began in 2023.
- Waymo said the Phoenix ride-hailing partnership completed hundreds of thousands of trips, while Uber faces investor concerns over robotaxi aggregation.
- Uber said it would announce a new Phoenix program with another autonomous vehicle provider but did not share details.
Uber Technologies said it has stopped offering its robotaxi with Alphabet Inc’s Waymo in Phoenix, the latest relationship twist between two companies that simultaneously act as partners and competitors.
The Arizona capital was the first market where Waymo offered paid passenger rides on its own ride-hailing app in 2020. In 2023, it signed a multiyear deal with the ridesharing giant and began offering a subset of its robotaxi fleet on the Uber app later that year. Under the arrangement, both companies used Waymo vehicles for both robotaxi trips and on-demand food delivery.
“Phoenix was an intentionally limited deployment, reaching no more than a dozen vehicles dedicated to the program,” an Uber spokesperson said in response to a Bloomberg News inquiry. The company will announce a new program with another autonomous vehicle provider in Phoenix in the future but did not share additional details.
According to Waymo, the ride-hailing portion of the Phoenix partnership ended last month after the companies completed hundreds of thousands of trips. The food delivery portion ends in May 2025.
Waymo said the vehicles will be integrated back into its fleet to complete a delivery agreement with Uber rival DoorDash Inc. and a public transit deal with Via Transportation that began last year. Riders in Phoenix can still welcome Waymo on the Waymo app.
“It was a productive pilot that paved the way for future expansion and partnerships around the world,” a Waymo spokesperson said of the Uber program in Phoenix.
Cox Fleet’s Kevin Clark discusses how fleets must rethink their maintenance strategies to remain efficient and flexible. Tune in by going above or RoadSigns.ttnews.com.
The completion of the program marks the latest development in the Uber-Waymo partnership, which is being closely watched by Wall Street as a key measure of the success of Uber’s ambitions to become a major robotaxi aggregator.
Since their partnership expanded to Austin and Atlanta in 2025, the companies have not announced additional cities where they will work together, even as they continue to add fleets and operating area in those two markets. Waymo, meanwhile, has expanded into Nashville, Miami and other cities in Texas, where it works with alternative fleet managers and finds itself competing with Uber for passengers.
This has caused concern among some analysts and industry observers, who are worried about Uber’s future if robotaxis proliferate, and if operators like Waymo and Tesla Inc. decide not to make their vehicles available on the Uber app. Uber shares have fallen more than 18% over the past 12 months, notably lagging the 20% gain seen in the S&P 500 index.
Uber is increasingly making deals to counter that narrative. Betting that driverless technology will one day become a thing, Uber has positioned itself as the commercialization platform for such rides, and has signed deals with more than a dozen autonomous vehicle providers such as Lucid Group, Nuro Inc., Amazon.com Inc.’s Zoox, Everide Inc., Baidu Inc. and Veride Inc.
But Uber executives have said most of these partnerships won’t launch or expand on a large scale for at least a few more years. In contrast, Waymo operates more than 3,000 vehicles in more than 10 US cities.
