What is a robotaxi depot?

Self-driving taxis are on the road in more than a dozen US metros. Tesla’s Cybercab is the most-discussed example, but Waymo, Zoox and Uber’s partner fleets are all running, scaling or preparing to launch. The vehicles get the attention. The infrastructure they need between rides gets almost none, and it is the part that decides how many cars a city can actually run.

This guide is the category reference: the definition, what happens inside a depot, what the real estate and the electrical service have to be, who is building them (with a source and a date for each), what they cost to build and to use, and where the data lives. The term is also written AV depot, autonomous vehicle depot or robotaxi hub in press coverage, and Cybercab depot when the fleet in question is Tesla’s. The rest of the industry’s vocabulary is collected in our robotaxi and autonomous fleet glossary.

What is a robotaxi depot?

A robotaxi depot is the physical base an autonomous ride-hailing fleet returns to between rides. It provides secure parking, charging, cleaning, inspection, staging toward demand, maintenance coordination and incident response for cars that have no driver to take them home. Depots are also called AV depots, autonomous vehicle depots or robotaxi hubs; a Cybercab depot is the same facility for Tesla’s purpose-built vehicle.

A human-driven taxi parks at the driver’s house. A self-driving taxi has no driver and no house. The depot is where it goes when it is not on a trip, and everything below follows from that one fact.

Why autonomous vehicles need depots

The natural assumption is that existing facilities can absorb the job. They mostly cannot, because none of them was built for a vehicle that returns on its own with nobody inside it:

• Gas stations were built around a five-minute fuel transfer. An electric robotaxi needs a longer session on a DC fast charger and has nothing to do during that window but wait.
• Public parking lots have no charging, no security, no cleaning, no incident protocol and no guarantee the spaces are there when the fleet operator needs them.
• Owner garages work for one car whose owner lives inside the service area. They stop working at the second car, and they never worked for an owner in another state.
• Airport rideshare lots are staging areas for human-driven fleets that handle their own logistics. They are not built to charge, clean or inspect a vehicle.

The closest existing analogues are a car-rental return facility and a commercial trucking yard, and the pattern from every adjacent industry is centralisation: aircraft fly in, dock, get serviced and fly out; rental fleets cycle through return depots that clean, fuel, inspect and re-rent. Centralising also changes the unit economics. A high-power charger costs the same to install whether it serves one car or twenty; cleaning and inspection have setup time that five cars in sequence amortise and one car five times a day does not; and dispatch decisions are only as good as the operator’s view of every car’s state, which is easier in one place than across many. Owners, for their part, want one statement, one phone number for incidents and one deposit, not four vendors and a spreadsheet.

Where do robotaxis park?

Robotaxis park at depots run by the fleet’s network or its contractors, not on the street. Between rides a car returns to an assigned stall in a fenced, camera-covered lot, where it is charged, cleaned and inspected before going out again. Waymo contracts that work to partners such as Moove and Avis Budget; Tesla and Zoox run their own sites. No depot for privately owned robotaxis is operating yet.

Cars do not sit at the depot all day. A well-run fleet stages vehicles near where demand is about to be, which is why depot location is judged on repositioning miles rather than rent; where to park a fleet of Cybercabs works through that trade-off, and where a privately owned Cybercab parks and charges between rides covers the owner’s version of the question.

What happens inside a robotaxi depot

Eight jobs, done in a loop. A depot that skips one pushes it back onto whoever owns the car, which is the thing the owner was paying to avoid. The Tesla-specific version of this list is what happens at a Cybercab depot.

Three of these deserve a note. Charging is the job that sets the site’s cost and its opening date, covered under electrical infrastructure below; the vehicle side (why the cars seen so far take DC only, and why a home wall connector cannot charge one) is in can you charge a Cybercab at home. Maintenance at taxi duty is a cost line with real numbers behind it, itemised in robotaxi maintenance costs. Dispatch is the distinction people get wrong most often: the robotaxi network owns the riders and the dispatch algorithm; the depot owns the decision about which cars are ready to receive it.

Real estate requirements

A depot is closer to industrial outdoor storage than to a warehouse or a parking garage. The site needs four things, and the fourth is the one that kills projects.

• Lot size. No operator publishes a square-feet-per-stall figure, so treat any such number as an estimate. What is public is the range of facility sizes: Uber’s Houston depot is 50,000 sq ft, Flexdrive’s Nashville hub 80,000 sq ft, Zoox’s Las Vegas base 190,000 sq ft (sources in the examples table), and Tesla’s Austin filing describes a lot of about 128 spaces. At the other end, DockDuty’s own illustrative depot concept on the homepage is a roughly 6,000 sq ft corner lot with 14 stalls drawn; that is a labelled illustration, not a site plan.
• Security. Fencing, a gate, and camera coverage of every stall, because a car that returns on its own at 2am is parked with nobody watching it. Garage-keeper insurance covers damage that happens while the car is in the depot’s care.
• Proximity to the service zone. Every mile between the depot and demand is driven empty, twice. Operators screen sites on power first and location economics second; the location half is worked through in where to park a fleet of Cybercabs.
• Zoning. State robotaxi law decides whether a driverless car may carry passengers; it does not decide whether a city will permit the lot. As the robotaxi depot operator page puts it, state preemption of road rules does not reach zoning, so a state can authorise driverless operation and a city can still say no. The clearest 2026 example: Tesla won conditional-use approval for a robotaxi charging hub at 825 Sansome Street in San Francisco in November 2025, then withdrew the plan on February 3, 2026 after a Teamsters appeal drew the support of eight supervisors (Mission Local). Which states allow driverless operation, and on what paperwork, is the state half of that question.

Electrical infrastructure

The fence, stalls and cameras are the cheap part. The constraint that shapes this category is electrical power. Every fleet operating today charges by DC fast charger, and a depot charging a large fleet needs utility service measured in megawatts: big urban sites are being wired for up to 12 MW (Axios, July 22, 2026). Tesla’s Austin filing pairs 48 Supercharger stalls with up to 80 wireless-charging spaces in a second phase, fast charge for turnaround and slow for dwell. That means utility upgrades, not just chargers in the ground.

The long pole is not zoning or construction. It is the transformer, the equipment that steps utility power down to charger voltage. A standard 1 MVA pad-mounted unit that quoted at eight weeks in 2023 quoted at 12 to 18 months by mid-2026, with the shortage projected to worsen into 2027 as data centres and grid replacement compete for the same factory slots. That single fact explains most depot economics: capacity cannot be conjured when demand shows up, so it is planned, permitted and reserved before the gate opens. The sources, the price of a charge port and the rest of the stack are in the build cost, line by line, from power to people.

Depot vs fleet-management software

Fleet-management software schedules work and reports on it. It owns no land, no chargers and no staff, so somebody still has to physically plug the car in, clean it and fetch it when it stops. A depot is the facility and the people who do that part; a depot company may also ship the software, but the software alone is not a depot. If you only need the reporting layer you do not need a depot; if the car has to be physically handled, software will not do it. The canonical version of this answer, with what each layer covers, is on how a depot differs from fleet-management software.

First-party vs third-party depots

“Depot” describes the facility, not who owns the cars in it, and that is the split that matters. A first-party depot is run by the company that owns or dispatches the fleet: Tesla’s robotaxi hubs and Zoox’s Las Vegas facility. A third-party depot is run by an independent company that takes in vehicles it does not own under contract: Moove, Avis Budget, Avomo and Flexdrive running depots for Waymo, and Oro Mobility for Uber. A third-party depot serving individually owned robotaxis is the same category and is planned rather than operating, because no privately owned robotaxi is in service on any driverless network yet. The three kinds of operator, and the owner-operated alternative, are defined on the robotaxi depot operator page.

Examples of operator-owned depots

Every row below serves a fleet that a network or platform owns or contracts. Each has a primary source or reputable reporting a reader can check; the date is the source’s. “Operating” means a facility taking vehicles today, “announced” means filed, leased or under construction.

Left out on purpose: Waymo’s San Francisco and Los Angeles depots, which are documented only by observers filming from public property, and Zoox’s Austin depot filing, whose current status no source confirms. Private-equity and infrastructure funds are now treating depots as an asset class. The full list, with capacity, charging and status per row, is the robotaxi depot database, and you can see every metro where those fleets run today, on the US robotaxi map.

Independent depot companies

Three kinds of company are approaching the category from outside the networks, and none of them is operating a depot for a privately owned robotaxi, because no such vehicle is in service.

• Fleetport. Per Axios on September 9, 2026, Fleetport plans six airport-adjacent hubs (Austin, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami) at 100 to 250 robotaxis each, opening targeted for 2027. The story was reposted by CMU Safety21.
• Charging-only operators. Voltera and Revel announced a merger on May 28, 2026 (Electrek) to run fleet fast-charging, more than 1,000 stalls operating or in development across 11 US metros. Terawatt Infrastructure opened a fleet charging site in Inglewood on October 9, 2024, with 29 DC fast chargers about three miles from LAX. These companies sell one of the eight jobs, energy, to fleet operators; they do not inspect, clean, stage or respond to incidents.
• DockDuty. Developing a third-party depot for privately owned autonomous vehicles, sold per stall: assigned stall, on-site charging, cleaning and readiness, staging, dispatch coordination, 24-hour incident response, maintenance coordination and an owner dashboard. No depot is operating yet. Orlando, our lead market, has a depot targeted for Q4 2026, no lease has been executed, and the plan depends on network terms no manufacturer has published. The owner platform is live as a public demo, and the founding 50 stalls closed on September 5, 2026.

The sourced company-by-company table, including the networks’ own partners, is on the robotaxi depot operator page.

The wider field, including charging providers, field operations firms and software companies, is in the robotaxi depot companies directory.

For owners comparing the companies that offer to run a privately owned Cybercab, the dated side-by-side is Cybercab and robotaxi management companies, compared.

How big is a robotaxi depot?

There is no standard size, and no operator has published how many cars each charger serves. The sites documented here run from an 8-stall fleet charging filing (Tesla, Wesley Chapel) to a 190,000 sq ft fleet base (Zoox, Las Vegas). Charging-only hubs are counted in stalls; full-service depots add cleaning, inspection and maintenance space, like Uber’s leased 50,000 sq ft Houston depot, with a planned 40 chargers and 15 maintenance bays.

The published sites fall into four shapes. Every figure below comes from a row in the examples table or the independent companies list above, where each source is linked; the date is the source’s.

What sets the charger count is the schedule more than the fleet size. A car that only charges in the gap between demand peaks needs a fast charger for a short window; a car that sits overnight can take a slower DC charger (the Cybercab has no onboard AC charger). Tesla’s Austin filing has both, which reads as Superchargers for turnaround and wireless spaces for dwell. Capacity, charging and status for every documented site, one row each, are in the robotaxi depot database.

Economics

Depot economics have two sides, and they are usually argued by different people.

What it costs to build. There is no published all-in figure, but the lines are knowable from 2026 data. A single 150 kW DC fast-charge port runs $90,000 to $150,000 installed, with make-ready electrical and civil work driving 50 to 70 percent of the charging total; a pad-mounted transformer costs $40,000 to $300,000 and quotes at 12 to 18 months; Orlando industrial asking rents averaged $11.62 per square foot NNN in late 2025. The stack, with each source, is in how much it costs to build a robotaxi depot.

What a stall costs an owner. The only published owner-side rate card in this category is DockDuty’s: Priority stalls at $550 per stall per month for one or two cars, stepping down to $475 at seven or more, plus a per-ride service fee of 15 percent stepping down to 13 percent, with a $450 deposit that is refundable until onboarding and credited against the $1,000 onboarding fee. The full card, every fee and the tier table are on the pricing page. DockDuty sells the depot stalls priced above, so it is not a neutral party on this question, and nothing here is investment advice. If you want to see what a stall has to earn to justify either side of that ledger, run your numbers in the Cybercab earnings calculator.

Terminology

Where this guide’s vocabulary is defined: robotaxi depot operator (the company that runs the facility, first-party or third-party), mobility hub, autonomous fleet operations, depot-as-a-service, transformer lead time, staging, charging operator and stall. The glossary entry for the term itself is robotaxi depot.

Data and research

The reference material behind this guide, all on this site and all citeable:

• The robotaxi depot database: every documented depot, hub and fleet-charging site, with operator, city, size, capacity, charging, status and a source per row.
• The US robotaxi map: every metro with driverless service, with the data as CSV and JSON.
• Robotaxi laws by state: where driverless operation is legal and on what paperwork.
• How many rides a robotaxi gives per day: the derived 20 to 24 rides a day, from published fleet totals.
• How much it costs to build a robotaxi depot: chargers, transformers, land and people, with 2026 sources.
• The robotaxi and autonomous fleet glossary: 50-plus definitions, also published as JSON.

Robotaxi depot FAQ

What is a robotaxi depot?
The physical and operational base an autonomous fleet returns to between rides: parking, charging, cleaning, inspection, staging, maintenance coordination, dispatch coordination and incident response. Also called an AV depot or a robotaxi hub, or a Cybercab depot when the fleet is Tesla’s.

Where do robotaxis park?
At depots run by the fleet’s network or its contractors, not on the street. Between rides a car returns to an assigned stall in a fenced, camera-covered lot, where it is charged, cleaned and inspected before it goes out again. No depot for privately owned robotaxis is operating yet.

Who operates robotaxi depots today?
Networks and their partners: Tesla and Zoox for their own fleets, and Moove, Avis Budget Group and Avomo for Waymo in different cities, with Lyft’s Flexdrive, Uber and Hertz building for late 2026 and 2027. All of those serve operator-owned fleets: DockDuty’s Orlando depot, targeted for Q4 2026, is planned for individually owned Cybercabs. The sourced company-by-company table is on the robotaxi depot operator page.

How much power does a robotaxi depot need?
Multi-megawatt utility service; large urban sites are being wired for up to 12 MW. Transformer lead times of 12 to 18 months in 2026 are the real clock on new capacity.

What is the difference between a robotaxi depot and fleet management software?
Fleet management software schedules work and reports on it; it owns no land, chargers or staff, so somebody still has to plug the car in and clean it. A depot is the facility and the people who do that physical work. One company can offer both, and the software alone is not a depot.

Can an individual Cybercab owner use a robotaxi depot?
That is what DockDuty is building: an owner reserves a stall, drops the car off, and the depot parks, charges, cleans and coordinates dispatch while the owner watches earnings from a dashboard anywhere. No DockDuty depot is operating yet; Orlando, our lead market, has a depot targeted for Q4 2026, and the dashboard runs as a public demo with no login, no email and no card. What DockDuty sells, priced per stall, is on the depot company page.