Waymo expands teen rider accounts to Nashville
Original: Waymo’s latest expansion strategy: teenagers
Why This Matters
Targeting teens opens a high-frequency, underserved rider segment that could meaningfully expand Waymo's weekly trip volume.
Waymo is opening its robotaxi service to riders as young as 13 in Nashville, marking the second city to offer teen accounts after Phoenix launched the program in 2025. Teen accounts must link to a parent or guardian but allow unsupervised rides across Waymo's full Nashville service area, including trips with up to three additional teen passengers.
Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company, announced it will allow teenagers aged 13 and up to use its robotaxi service in Nashville — the second market after Phoenix to receive the company's teen account program. A Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch the Nashville rollout is the 'first of many' teen launches planned across multiple markets in the coming months, with expansion tied to operational maturity and local regulatory approval.
Nashville itself is a relatively recent Waymo market. The company launched there in April 2026 across a 50-square-mile area, and earlier this month its robotaxis became bookable through the Lyft app. Teen accounts must be connected to a parent or guardian to activate, but once live, teens can request rides independently anywhere in the service area and bring up to three guests aged 13–17. Waymo did not disclose how user ages would be verified.
The teen push comes as Waymo's overall ridership scales rapidly. Paid trips grew tenfold — from 50,000 per week in May 2024 to over 500,000 per week earlier this year — driven by aggressive market expansion. In the past month alone, Waymo launched services in Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Tampa, bringing its total to roughly a dozen cities.