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A trip in a Waymo robotaxi still costs more, on average, than a comparable ride in a human-driven Uber or a Lyft. But that gap is narrowing, according to new data published Tuesday by Obi, a company that aggregates real-time pricing and pick-up times across multiple ride-hailing services.
Two factors, working together, are behind the change. Waymo has lowered its pricing, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area where the data was pulled, while traditional ride-hailing rides on the Uber and Lyft networks have risen, according to Obi.
The new data was collected between November 27 and January 1, with Obi simulating more than 94,000 ride requests in the Bay Area. The company found that Waymo rides cost an average of $19.69, while Uber rides were slightly cheaper at $17.47. Lyft rides across the same period averaged $15.47.
In June, Obi released its first report analyzing robotaxi versus ride-hailing data. The data, which was taken from rides in April 2025, showed Waymo rides averaged $20.43, Uber landed at $15.58, and Lyft rides evened out at $14.44. Compared to these figures, Waymo’s average cost has dropped 3.62%, while Uber’s went up 12%, and Lyft’s climbed 7%.
Obi CEO Ashwini Anburajan told TechCrunch she believes this is a trend to watch because, while last April’s data implied customers were willing to pay a higher price to ride in a Waymo, the “novelty is wearing off for people in the Bay Area.” That means Waymo will likely keep having to price its offering more competitively, she said.
The wildcard: Tesla
The wildcard in Obi’s new report is that it collected data on Tesla’s burgeoning robotaxi service, which appears to be far cheaper than these other three offerings. But there are a number of important caveats.
For one, Tesla isn’t technically operating a robotaxi service in the San Francisco area, where the data was sampled. Tesla doesn’t have the permits required to operate a driverless commercial robotaxi service in the state. Nor does it have a transportation network company permit like Uber or Lyft. Instead, Tesla has a transportation charter permit from the California Public Utilities Commission, which means the company uses employees to drive the company’s vehicles equipped with its Full Self-Driving software.
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Tesla’s Bay Area fleet is also modest. Crowdsourced data from the website Robotaxi Tracker has helped log around 168 vehicles in Tesla’s ride-hail fleet, though not all of those cars are active all the time. (Obi notes in the report that only 156 were spotted by the crowdsourced website at the time the company ran its data sampling.)
That smaller fleet has driven by wait times. Of the four services surveyed, Tesla had the longest wait time with an average ETA of 15.32 minutes. Waymo’s average wait time was 5.74 minutes (up from 4.28 minutes last April), while Lyft and Uber came in at 5.14 minutes and 3.15 minutes, respectively.
These inputs — fleet size, human drivers, wait times — could have all affect how Tesla prices rides at true scale, and it’s hard to say when and how that might happen. Tesla only just recently pulled safety monitors out of a handful of cars in Austin, Texas.
If Tesla can scale its robotaxis — which rely on camera inputs alone — the company should theoretically be able to price rides lower than competitors like Waymo which, integrates its self-driving software into modified vehicles equipped with several different kinds of sensors.
Popularity contest
Anburajan thinks there’s value in Tesla operating a ride-hailing service, ahead of any attempt at operating true robotaxis.
“It’s not really a autonomous vehicle at the moment. It has a safety driver in it. They’re building brand familiarity. They’re building brand preference for people that already like Teslas and people who are inclined to like Tesla,” she said.
There’s some evidence of this in the report Obi released Tuesday.
Along with the ride requests sampled in the Bay Area, Obi surveyed 2,000 people in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas on a number of issues related to robotaxis and ride-hailing. Over half of those respondents who had taken an autonomous vehicle ride said they’d ridden in a Tesla robotaxi. And when asked which autonomous brand they preferred the most, respondents chose Tesla 31% of the time.
Waymo was still the most preferred, with 39.8% of respondents choosing the Alphabet-owned brand. But this strong preference for Tesla, despite the company not operating a real robotaxi service at any scale yet, hints at future demand.
That strong preference for Tesla is also being driven in large part by a particular group: men. Women who were surveyed by Obi were essentially evenly split when it comes to choosing Waymo or Tesla, with Zoox a distant third at 8%. But 56% of men surveyed preferred Tesla to Waymo (25%) or Zoox (7%).
What’s next?
Obi’s report offers a good baseline ahead of a year that’s sure to see many developments in the world of autonomous vehicles. Waymo is rapidly expanding into new cities, even partnering with Uber and Lyft in some of them. Those ride-hail companies are bringing many other autonomous vehicle partners onto their platforms, too. And Tesla will likely look to prove its robotaxi approach works in order to expand its nascent offering.
Waymo is also about to start offering rides in a new van-like vehicle that it is building with Chinese company Zeekr. That vehicle, known as Ojai, is expected to have a lower up-front cost for Waymo and could allow the company to get more aggressive on pricing.
One thing is clear to Anburajan, though: real competition is coming. Other companies are preparing to launch their own robotaxi services. Nuro is supplying its self-driving system to modified Lucid Gravity vehicles as part of a premium robotaxi network that will be operated by Uber. Hyundai-backed Motional has rebooted its efforts and plans to launch a commercial robotaxi service in Las Vegas before the end of the year. And other companies like Avride have partnered with Uber to bring robotaxis to other U.S. cities.
“It’s still very early in the game, so no one’s a late entrant, right?” she said. “We’re in this new era, so who’s gonna capture market share and move fast to win consumers over?”
