NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. ride services company Lyft Inc and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) self-driving car unit Waymo have launched a self-driving vehicle partnership, bringing together two rivals to dominant ride-sharing service Uber Technologies Inc.[UBER.UL] 
 
 Lyft, the No. 2 U.S. ride service by ride volume, in a statement said a deal to launch self-driving pilots would accelerate its vision for transportation and Waymo, which is beginning tests of a self-driving car service in Phoenix, said the partnership would let its technology reach “more people, in more places”. 
 
 Neither offered many details of the agreement, which was reported earlier by the New York Times. 
 
 The auto industry and technology companies are racing to develop self-driving technology, which they expect in a number of years will transform transportation, cutting costs of ride services and changing the way people buy and use cars. 
 
 Uber is the biggest U.S. ride service by volume and has been developing self-driving technology, which it sees as a key to its future, as it expands its ride service with human drivers. 
 
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 Waymo has some of the most advanced self-driving vehicle technology and has been looking for partners, while Lyft offers ride services in about 300 U.S. cities. 
 
 Still, Lyft said the deal is non-exclusive and will allow it to continue a self-driving partnership with U.S. automaker General Motors Co (GM.N), which is a Lyft investor. 
 
 GM plans to deploy thousands of self-driving electric cars in test fleets partnering with Lyft beginning 2018, sources told Reuters in February. 
 
 Lyft is extremely early in its autonomous efforts. It has relied heavily on General Motors for any testing and doesn’t have a program that rivals Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, a department in Uber dedicated to building self-driving technology. 
 
 Waymo and Uber are fighting in court over self-driving technology that Waymo says was stolen by a former employee who founded another company that Uber later acquired. Uber says it did not steal or use Waymo secrets. 
 
 Talks on the Waymo and Lyft collaboration between began last summer, a person familiar with the situation said. 
 
 Lyft raised $600 million at a $7.5 billion valuation last month. 

 SAN FRANCISCO — As the race to bring self-driving vehicles to the public intensifies, two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent players are teaming up. 
 
 Waymo, the self-driving car unit that operates under Google’s parent company, has signed a deal with the ride-hailing start-up Lyft, according to two people familiar with the agreement who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The deal calls for the companies to work together to bring autonomous vehicle technology into the mainstream through pilot projects and product development efforts, these people said. 
 
 The deal was confirmed by Lyft and Waymo. 
 
 “Waymo holds today’s best self-driving technology, and collaborating with them will accelerate our shared vision of improving lives with the world’s best transportation,” a Lyft spokeswoman said in a statement. 

 Ride-hailing startup Lyft Inc. and Waymo LLC, the driverless-car division of Google parent Alphabet Inc., said they would work together to develop autonomous-vehicle technology, dealing another potential blow to rival Uber Technologies Inc.’s ambitions. 
 
 The two companies said Sunday they will collaborate on developing products and technology for autonomous autos. In statements, they declined to elaborate more specifically on the terms of the deal or what the work would entail. 
 
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– Lyft has the brawn via its nationwide fleet of taxis, Waymo has the brains with its self-driving technology, and together they just decided to make lots of money. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times report on a Sunday announcement from the two companies on a sparsely detailed deal to work together to develop products and tech for autonomous vehicles. It's a deal the Times says has "competitive implications" for ride-hailing company Uber, which is currently being sued by Waymo, the self-driving unit for Google parent Alphabet, over allegedly stolen trade secrets. A Gartner transportation analyst tells the Journal that the teaming up of Waymo and Lyft, which Reuters notes is the second US ride service by volume, could prove "very powerful" and that No. 1 Uber could see this as a "significant threat." Both companies have already partnered with others in the industry—Lyft with GM, for example, to test self-driving Chevy Bolts, and Waymo installing its technology in Fiat Chrysler minivans. The Times notes these pairings highlight "fluid" relationships and "shifting" alliances for competitive advantage in the sector. The Lyft-Waymo partnership would seem to be a symbiotic one, offering a way for Lyft (which hasn't indicated it wants to create its own self-driving technology) to get into that sector, and Waymo to move from test phase to real-world application. Per the Journal, one wrench that could muck up the new partners' plans down the road: Waymo's ambitions, which could eventually push it into incorporating its technology into its own self-driving fleets.