Lyft CEO Sees Autonomous Vehicles Including Alphabet's Waymo As Game-Changer For Ride-Hailing, Not A Threat: 'The More AVs… The Better Lyft Does'

Autonomous vehicles will be a transformational addition to the ride-hailing marketplace, according to Lyft LYFT CEO David Risher.

What Happened: “The more AVs, the more rideshare market expands, and the better Lyft does,” Risher said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday.

Risher commended Alphabet Inc’s GOOG GOOGL autonomous driving unit Waymo, saying it is “pretty remarkable” to see a car driving with no driver. However, these autonomous vehicles are not eating into Lyft’s share of the market, he said.

In San Francisco, where Waymo offers autonomous rides to the public, Lyft’s market share is roughly flat, the CEO said.

“That suggests that either the market is increasing or they’re taking share from somebody else. But they’re not taking it from us. So that’s great because what that suggests, which we’ve been saying for a while is, on average, we would expect, as self-driving cars enter the marketplace, they’ll actually expand the market,” Risher said.

In Phoenix, another market where autonomous vehicles operate, Lyft’s share is growing faster than across the country, he said.

“While people are taking autonomous rides, they are also taking a lot of rideshare,” he said, while also noting that autonomous vehicles are limited to certain cities and specific regions within the city.

Why It Matters: Risher said in a post on X earlier this week that vehicles with Mobileye autonomous vehicle tech will launch on the Lyft platform in Dallas “as soon as 2026.” These vehicles, about 1000, will be owned by Japanese conglomerate Marubeni which has experience in fleet ownership.

Thousands more autonomous vehicles will also be launched in other cities going forward, he added. The CEO, however, did not clarify which automaker’s vehicles will be used.

Risher on Tuesday explained that autonomous vehicles are ‘expensive assets’ and that the company was looking for partners to take on the financial commitment of owning the cars.

Lyft stock, however, is down 12% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after closing down 4.8% at $14.39 on Tuesday following a disappointing gross booking outlook.

The company on Tuesday forecast gross booking between $4.05 billion and $4.20 billion, below estimates, for the first quarter.

Lyft’s fourth quarter results, however, beat estimates. The company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $1.55 billion, in line with analyst estimates of $1.56 billion. The company reported fourth-quarter net income of $61.7 million, versus a loss of $26.3 million in the prior year's corresponding quarter.

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