Waymo (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has impressed in Austin during its early launch of a robotaxi service. The autonomous driving company's robotaxi service in Austin attracted 20% of the rides offered by Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) during the last week of March, per a report from YipitData. The takeaway is that more Austin rideshare customers were willing to take the autonomous Uber (NYSE:UBER) option for a test drive than some analysts predicted.  

YipitData also found that Waymo has generated more than 80% more driverless rides in its operating zone in Austin in the first 27 days of offering the service than it did in the early days of its San Francisco launch. 

Weighing in on the Waymo development, A16z partner Alex Immerman noted that when Waymo launched in August 2023 in San Franciso, Uber (UBER) had 66% market share in San Francisco and Lyft (LYFT) had the other 34%. As of a check November, Waymo had snagged 22% market share to match Lyft (LYFT) in the overlapping San Francisco region, while Uber's (UBER) market share declined to 55%. 

"Anecdotally, Waymo's wait times are longer than Uber and Lyft because they don't have enough cars on the road. But they are close enough to that acceptable threshold, that their superior product (clean, nice cars, quiet drivers, etc) tips the riders in their direction. It's possible when Waymo puts more cars on the road and reduces wait times to be in line with Uber and Lyft, their share could climb even faster," highlighted Immerman.

Waymo's autonomous driving service is currently available in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and general Silicon Valley region that includes Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, and parts of Sunnyvale.

Waymo's future competitors in U.S. autonomous driving markets will be Amazon's (AMZN) Zoox (ZOOX) and Tesla (TSLA). Globally, Baidu (BIDU) , WeRide (WRD), and Pony AI (PONY) are out in front of other competitors. In general, analysts believe the U.S. and global robotaxi market will be big enough to support a few major players.