Day: September 18, 2025

• Waymo has its own app in which riders can hail a robotaxi.
• That hasn’t stopped Waymo from partnering with major ride-hailing companies and other platforms.
• The move shows how the company is exploring multiple avenues to get riders inside its cars.

Waymo wants more people in its robotaxis. Two new partnerships this week show how the company is pursuing that goal.

On Wednesday, the Alphabet spinoff announced it would bring self-driving cars to Nashville, in part by making its service available on the Lyft platform. The partnership means Waymo is now partnered with two of the biggest ride-hailing companies in North America: Uber and Lyft.

At a smaller scale, Waymo said today that it will make its existing robotaxi fleet in the Metro-Phoenix area available to Chandler Flex riders.

Chandler Flex is an on-demand microtransit program powered by Via, a New York City-based public transit software company that went public earlier this week. The program operates similarly to an Uber or Lyft but has lower fares and determines routes based on where other riders are going.

Chandler Flex’s ridership is small compared to Waymo’s monthly numbers — 120,000 rides in 3 years compared to Waymo’s more than 250,000 trips a week.

It just goes to show how a company backed by a tech titan is willing to try different avenues, small or large, to get more riders in robotaxi seats.

“The main purpose of what Waymo does today, I think, is to learn,” Brad Templeton, who was a consultant for Waymo’s Google Self-Driving Car Project phase, told Business Insider. “Up until recently, it’s been about learning what works, what doesn’t work — experimenting with pricing, experimenting with policies, and experimenting with partnerships.”

Waymo has shown it’s willing to go it alone in large markets, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, using its proprietary Waymo app. But the company has also leveraged partnerships to tap into a rider base that has had more than a decade to familiarize itself with Uber and Lyft.

Alphabet and Google are big brands, Templeton said. Waymo, less so.

“Because (Alphabet) is building the Waymo brand on its own, basically, partnering with an Uber just means ‘we can keep our vehicles full,'” Templeton said.

Waymo doesn’t disclose the terms of its partnerships, including how much revenue it gets from rides, but Templeton said the robotaxi company could have significant sway considering Alphabet’s size.

The company is 14 times larger than Lyft and Uber combined by market cap.

Waymo’s partnership with Via and Chandler Flex is less about attracting more users than about exploring different use cases for autonomous vehicles.

A Waymo spokesperson told Business Insider the company is “excited about the long-term potential for Waymo to help improve access to shared, electric transportation through Via’s platform.”

“Ultimately, this partnership was created to help fill gaps in transportation and create even greater access to affordable microtransit in a community we already operate in,” the spokesperson said.

Templeton, however, still sees the move as an early glimpse into a future where autonomous vehicles could replace some of the costly aspects of maintaining a public transit system, including the fuel for buses and the drivers.

“Practical people have already been doing a lot of microtransits because they know that the (transit) systems they operate today are very inefficient and very expensive and that it’s actually cheaper to do it with smaller vehicles,” he said. “I’ve kind of been expecting experiments in this sooner than this.”

• A Spirit exec told its pilots’ union it needs to save $100 million a year on their contract.
• If a deal isn’t reached by October, Spirit could ask a bankruptcy court to reject the union contract.
• Spirit pilots’ salaries range between $84,000 and upward of $270,000 based on current terms.

Spirit Airlines bosses want to cut pilots’ union-negotiated pay as it seeks to recover from its second bankruptcy filing in under a year.

The airline needs to save $100 million a year on its collective bargaining agreement with pilots, Chief Operating Officer John Bendoraitis told the pilots’ union in a Tuesday letter shared with Business Insider.

He said Spirit “must achieve significant cost savings” to “secure the company’s future.”

“Given the challenges we face, time is of the essence,” he added.

The letter proposed daily meetings with the Air Line Pilots Association, or ALPA, starting on Wednesday.

If the two sides can’t reach a deal by October 1, Spirit could ask the courts to change or reject the union contract, under a section of Chapter 11 bankruptcy law.

How much are Spirit pilots paid?

Airline pilots’ pay varies depending on seniority.

The contract, agreed in 2023, means first officers in their first year at Spirit make $97.15 an hour, while captains who have been there at least 12 years are paid $312 an hour.

With a minimum monthly guarantee of 72 hours, that translates to annual salaries between roughly $84,000 and $270,000.

With around 3,000 pilots, Spirit’s proposed cuts suggest they could face salary cuts of about $30,000 on average.

The value of seniority means long-serving employees could face a pay cut if they moved to another airline. Spirit offers the highest salaries of US budget carriers, although Delta, United, and American pay starting first officers over $100,000.

The union’s response

Captain Ryan Muller, the chair of the Spirit ALPA union’s master executive council, wrote to members on Tuesday and launched a survey to gather their thoughts on the negotiations.

He said that past bankruptcy proceedings show there is “a significant advantage to reaching a consensual agreement” with the company, rather than letting the bankruptcy court impose terms.

The news also prompted Spirit’s flight attendants’ union to write to its members on Wednesday.

While the airline hadn’t indicated it wanted to change its CBA, the union said it was “prepared for next steps management may take.”

“Again, this bankruptcy will be much more difficult than the last one,” the letter added.

Last month, Spirit filed for bankruptcy for the second time in less than a year. It was previously under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection between November 2024 and March 2025.

When Business Insider asked Spirit for comment on the proposed salary negotiations, the airline referred to CEO Dave Davis’s Wednesday memo to staff.

In that memo, Davis said Spirit would cut 25% of its flight capacity and meet with labor unions as part of its efforts to reduce costs.

“Unfortunately, these are the tough calls we must make to emerge stronger,” Davis said.

The shooting broke out on Sept. 17 as officers were following up on a domestic-related investigation. A suspect was also killed by police.