Should you put your Cybercab in an LLC?

The entity question arrives right after the tax question, which we answered separately. This post is the other half: not what you can deduct, but what you can lose. In Florida, where our first depot opens, that question has an edge no other state has.

Florida follows the dangerous instrumentality doctrine: a vehicle's owner is strictly, vicariously liable for harm caused by anyone operating it with permission — no owner negligence required — and Florida is the only state that applies this rule to automobiles (Alper Law, August 2026). Lend your car to a friend who runs a light, and the plaintiff pursues you. Statutory caps soften only the vicarious share: $100,000 per person / $300,000 per incident for bodily injury, plus $50,000 property damage.

Now delete the friend. Nobody knows how a doctrine built on the "permissive operator" maps onto a car whose operator is software — we walk that stack in our liability deep-dive. What matters here: on every reading, the titled owner is in it by default. That is why entity choice matters more here than for a landscaping truck.

What a Florida LLC actually shields

Florida Statutes § 605.0304 says an LLC's members and managers are not personally liable for its debts, obligations, or liabilities solely by that status. Put the title in the LLC's name and the "owner" the doctrine points at is the company. Your worst case shrinks from everything you own to everything the company owns: the car, its bank account, its insurance.

Florida adds a twist: under subsection (b) of the same statute, failure to observe company formalities is not a ground for imposing personal liability. Many states let plaintiffs attack missed meetings; Florida took that argument away. Not permission to be sloppy — the grounds that remain are exactly the ones a one-car robotaxi company is most likely to trip.

…and what pierces it

Florida courts pierce the veil under the Dania Jai-Alai three-part test: the plaintiff must show the member dominated the company so completely it had no independent existence — an alter ego — that the form served an improper purpose, and that the improper use caused the injury. Per the same source, the red flags:

• Commingling personal and company funds.
• Paying personal expenses from the business account.
• Personal use of business assets — the company's car doubling as your car.
• Undercapitalization — a company that could never cover the ordinary liabilities of its own business.

Single-member LLCs draw extra scrutiny — and nearly every robotaxi LLC will be single-member. The honest limit: no court anywhere has decided a veil-piercing case about a robotaxi LLC, and how a judge treats a one-car company operated by software is wide open.

What an LLC does not change

Your federal taxes. A single-member LLC is a disregarded entity (IRS, page updated July 27, 2026): income lands on your Schedule C and carries self-employment tax as if you owned the car personally. (It stays separate for employment and excise taxes and can hold its own EIN.) Every deduction in our tax post works the same either way — the entity question and the write-off question are different questions.

The car loan. Lenders do not extend credit to a week-old company on its own signature: business auto loans for a new entity usually require a personal guarantee (Experian, August 6, 2026), and if the company defaults, the default lands on your personal credit. The shield does not wall off the debt you co-signed.

The insurance bill. An entity neither lowers a premium nor changes the coverage the car needs — floors below; our insurance-cost explainer covers the planning band.

The mechanics: forming, titling, insuring

Forming. A Florida LLC costs $125 — a $100 filing fee plus a $25 registered agent designation. Keeping it alive costs a $138.75 annual report due by May 1; file late and it is $538.75, a late fee Sunbiz says cannot be waived.

Titling. The title must carry the company's exact legal name, and titling offices want proof the company exists — Charlotte County's tax collector, for example, requires a Sunbiz printout, plus an authorization letter if the signer is not listed. Under our remote-ownership structure the car stays registered in your home state, which will have its own version of that list.

Insuring. The named insured must match the titled owner — insurers can deny claims when title and policy name different parties. And a personal auto policy is out regardless: personal policies exclude public-or-livery-conveyance use (IRMI). One name across title, policy, and every contract — or the structure leaks.

The coverage floors Florida sets anyway

Entity or none, Florida mandates minimums for cars carrying paying passengers. The TNC statute, § 627.748 — the framework DockDuty operates under — layers coverage by phase: $50,000/$100,000 bodily injury plus $25,000 property damage logged on awaiting a match, and $1 million during a prearranged ride. § 627.749, written for autonomous vehicles operating on a network, requires $1 million primary coverage for death, bodily injury, and property damage, plus PIP and uninsured-motorist coverage — from the owner's policy, the network's, or a combination.

Which section governs a driverless, owner-absent car is unresolved — see below.

Personal name vs. LLC, side by side

What nobody can tell you yet

The open questions, listed rather than sold past:

• No robotaxi veil-piercing case law exists anywhere. Every analysis, including this one, argues by analogy.
• Tesla has published no third-party network terms as of August 2026 — nobody knows what entity, indemnity, or insurance terms it will impose.
• No admitted insurer publicly writes commercial policies for individually-owned autonomous vehicles yet.
• The § 627.748 vs. § 627.749 mapping for an owner-absent, driver-absent car is unresolved.
• Sales or use tax on retitling a car you already own into your own LLC is fact-specific — price it before you transfer.
• No-personal-guarantee financing for a fresh LLC is unproven. Assume you will sign one.

The checklist, if you go the LLC route

• Form the entity before the purchase — retitling later adds cost and raises the transfer-tax question above.
• Open a separate bank account on day one. Every fare in, every expense out.
• Never commingle. No personal spending from the company account, ever.
• Document the business purpose — contracts, records, decisions. The alter-ego test is about substance.
• Match title, policy, and contracts to one name: the company's.

Frequently asked questions

Can I put my Cybercab in an LLC and still use it personally?

You can — but regular personal use of a business asset is a classic veil-piercing red flag, alongside commingling funds and paying personal expenses from the business account. If the company's car doubles as your car, a plaintiff's lawyer will argue the LLC is your alter ego under the Dania Jai-Alai test — and livery coverage and personal-use coverage are different insurance products besides. If personal use matters to you, structure it deliberately with a Florida attorney — or keep a separate car.

How much does it cost to keep a Florida LLC for a robotaxi?

$125 to form — a $100 filing fee plus a $25 registered agent designation, per the Florida Division of Corporations fee schedule — then a $138.75 annual report due each May 1. File after May 1 and the total is $538.75, a late fee Sunbiz states cannot be waived. The dollars are small; the discipline is the real cost.

Does an LLC protect my personal assets if my robotaxi injures someone?

It is designed to, and nobody can promise it will. Florida Statutes § 605.0304 says a member is not personally liable for the company's obligations solely by being a member — so if the LLC holds title, the dangerous instrumentality doctrine's strict owner liability points at the company rather than at you. Three honest limits: everything inside the LLC — the car, its bank account, its revenue — stays exposed; a court can pierce the veil under the Dania Jai-Alai test; and no court anywhere has ruled on a robotaxi LLC. Insurance is the first line of defense. The entity is the second.

Can my LLC reserve the DockDuty stall directly?

Yes. DockDuty’s reservation checkout lets the LLC (or a corporation or partnership) execute the reservation agreement as the Owner party directly — you sign as its authorized representative, with your title stated in the agreement. (Trusts aren’t offered at checkout yet — trust drafting is with our attorney — but the agreement’s §8.3(b) accommodates transfers to a revocable trust at no charge.) If you already reserved in your personal name and form the entity later, the same §8.3(b) covers transfers to an entity you control at no charge. Either order works; reserving in the entity’s name from the start just saves the transfer step.

Do I need commercial insurance if my robotaxi is titled to an LLC?

Yes — the entity changes nothing about the coverage the car needs. Personal auto policies exclude public-or-livery-conveyance use, so a paying-passenger car needs commercial coverage either way. Florida Statutes § 627.749 sets the floor for autonomous vehicles on a network: $1 million primary coverage for death, bodily injury, and property damage, plus PIP and uninsured-motorist coverage — from the owner's policy, the network's, or a combination. If the LLC holds title, the LLC must be the named insured; a personally-named policy on a company-titled car is a claim denial waiting to happen.