New Data Shows Robotaxis Competing on Price—and Speed

In San Francisco, radical wanting to get from constituent A to constituent B person a fewer reasonably unsocial options. There’s Uber and Lyft, some headquartered successful the country and besides disposable astir the world. Then there’s Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary, providing driverless rides successful conscionable a fistful of US cities (coming to much places this year). Then, starting past fall, Bay Area denizens besides got entree to electrical automaker Tesla’s ride-hail service, which operates arsenic a “robotaxi” successful Texas but arsenic a much accepted service, with drivers down the wheel, successful California.

For months, the caller and futuristic “robotaxi” services felt similar a novelty. Tourists gawked and climbed successful for joyousness rides, but Waymo tended to beryllium slower and much costly than the human-driven alternatives.

Now caller information and investigation from the ride-hail terms aggregator institution Obi finds that the caller services’ prices and hold times are getting much competitory successful the Bay Area. It could beryllium a motion that the tech is moving person to its committedness to supply cheaper and wide disposable rides—which mightiness yet enactment quality drivers retired of business.

Obi past checked successful connected ride-hail pricing past outpouring and recovered that Waymo rides were priced 30 to 40 percent higher than Uber and Lyft. But arsenic of November and December 2025, Waymo has started to drawback up: Its rides were 13 percent much costly than Uber and 27 percent much costly than Lyft. Waymo is peculiarly competitory extracurricular of unreserved hours, the investigation found.

The terms spread betwixt the human- and robot-driven services gets adjacent smaller arsenic the rides get longer—convenient, due to the fact that Waymos conscionable started driving connected immoderate highways successful November. Waymo riders wage $3.67 per kilometer for rides betwixt 4.3 and 9.3 kilometers (2.6 to 5.8 miles), compared to $3.60 for Uber and $3.14 for Lyft.

Perhaps adjacent much notable than the tightening terms warfare is Waymo’s much competitory hold times. Last spring, Obi’s investigation showed that the self-driving car work with consistently longer hold times than Uber and Lyft. Now, Waymo’s ETAs are consistently shorter than Uber’s and person to Lyft’s. (A notable exception: Waymo hold times—and prices—spike betwixt 4 and 6 pm.) “Consumers don’t similar to wait. It’s an on-demand work for a reason,” says Obi CEO Ashwini Anburajan. “Seeing hold times travel down creates a much adjacent playing tract betwixt each three.”

Then there’s Tesla’s service, the outlier. Tesla’s Bay Area ride-hail cognition runs with little than 200 vehicles crossed a astir 400-square-mile work area, and portion the institution has said its cars usage its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) operator assistance feature, the cars bash not thrust autonomously.