\n<\/p>\n
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<\/a> by Obi, a company that aggregates real-time pricing and pickup times across multiple ride-hailing services.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n In June, Obi released its first report<\/a> 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\u2019s average cost has dropped 3.62%, while Uber\u2019s went up 12%, and Lyft\u2019s climbed 7%.<\/p>\n Obi CEO Ashwini Anburajan told TechCrunch she believes this is a trend to watch because, while last April\u2019s data implied customers were willing to pay a higher price to ride in a Waymo, the \u201cnovelty is wearing off for people in the Bay Area.\u201d That means Waymo will likely keep having to price its offering more competitively, she said.<\/p>\n The wild card in Obi\u2019s new report is that it collected data on Tesla\u2019s burgeoning robotaxi service, which appears to be far cheaper than these other three offerings. But there are a number of important caveats.<\/p>\n For one, Tesla isn\u2019t technically operating a robotaxi service in the San Francisco area, where the data was sampled. Tesla doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s vehicles equipped with its Full Self-Driving software. <\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Tesla\u2019s Bay Area fleet\u00a0is also modest. Crowdsourced data from the website Robotaxi Tracker has helped log around 168 vehicles<\/a> in Tesla\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n These inputs \u2014 fleet size, human drivers, wait times \u2014 could have affected how Tesla prices rides at true scale, and it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n If Tesla can scale its robotaxis \u2014 which rely on camera inputs alone \u2014 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.<\/p>\n Anburajan thinks there\u2019s value in Tesla operating a ride-hailing service, ahead of any attempt at operating true robotaxis.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not really an autonomous vehicle at the moment. It has a safety driver in it. They\u2019re building brand familiarity. They\u2019re building brand preference for people that already like Teslas and people who are inclined to like Tesla,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n There\u2019s some evidence of this in the report Obi released Tuesday. <\/p>\n 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\u2019d ridden in a Tesla robotaxi. And when asked which autonomous brand they preferred the most, respondents chose Tesla 31% of the time.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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%). <\/p>\n Obi\u2019s report offers a good baseline ahead of a year that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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<\/a> that will be operated by Uber. Hyundai-backed Motional has rebooted its efforts and plans to launch a commercial robotaxi service<\/a> in Las Vegas before the end of the year. And other companies like Avride have partnered with Uber<\/a> to bring robotaxis to other U.S. cities.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still very early in the game, so no one\u2019s a late entrant, right?\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re in this new era, so who\u2019s gonna capture market share and move fast to win consumers over?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe wild card: Tesla<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\nPopularity contest<\/h2>\n
What\u2019s next?<\/h2>\n