Where to park your fleet of Cybercabs.

Tesla has not yet delivered a Cybercab to a customer, but prospective owners are already planning for the day it does. The most common question we hear from them isn’t about the vehicle. It’s about everything around the vehicle. Where does the car physically sit between rides? Who charges it? Who cleans it? When something goes wrong at 2am, who answers the phone?

The short version: a fleet of Cybercabs is only as productive as the depot operating them. It is the companion to our breakdown of Cybercab fleet-management models. This post is a practical guide to depot options for Cybercab fleet owners, what a Cybercab depot actually does, the difference between physical depots and fleet management software, what to look for when picking one, and why Orlando, FL is one of the strongest US markets to park a Cybercab fleet.

What a Cybercab depot actually does

A Cybercab depot is a physical facility that handles the between-rides work for a fleet of autonomous vehicles. Six core responsibilities:

1. Parking: An assigned stall for each car, a fenced lot, gates, and 24/7 security cameras. Garage-keeper insurance covers damage that happens while the car is in the depot’s care (see who insures what).
2. Charging: On-site DC charging capable of keeping every car in the fleet topped up (the Cybercabs seen so far have no onboard AC charger, so Level 2 cannot charge them). Each Cybercab seen so far charges DC only, through a NACS port, as covered in how robotaxis charge. Capacity matters, the depot needs more chargers than the absolute minimum so cars don’t queue.
3. Cleaning: Interior wash between rides. Riders see the inside of the car; a depot that skimps here loses ratings fast.
4. Dispatch coordination: Getting the car onto the ride network the owner chooses, at the right times, once that network accepts privately owned cars. Tesla has not opened its network to them yet.
5. Incident response: Someone is on call when something happens: mechanical issue, rider complaint, accident, theft attempt. A 24-hour SLA is the floor; faster is the standard.
6. Documentation: Insurance certificates kept current, maintenance records, monthly statements showing trips, gross revenue, fees, and net to the owner.

Without a depot, the Cybercab owner does all of this themselves. For one car, that’s a part-time job. For five cars, it’s a full-time job. For ten, it’s a small business.

Physical depot vs. fleet management software

Two different products are sometimes lumped together under the same search query. They aren’t the same.

Fleet management software is a SaaS platform that shows you data about your fleet. Dashboards, reporting, integration with Tesla’s Fleet API. You see telemetry, ride counts, charging status, earnings, on a screen. The software doesn’t touch the car. Examples include dashboards built on Tesla’s Fleet API; our depot company directory lists who offers what.

Physical depot infrastructure is a real building or lot where the cars actually go between rides. Chargers, security, on-site staff, and the operational layer that keeps cars running. DockDuty is planning depots: Orlando is our lead market, with a depot targeted for Q4 2026, and we are planning depots in Miami and Tampa Bay at the same time (no site, lease or opening date yet). No depot is open yet and no site lease is signed. The depot is the place. Software is what reports on the place.

Most Cybercab fleet owners need both: software to monitor the fleet remotely, physical operations to actually keep the cars charged, clean, and dispatched. Some depot operators bundle both into one service. Some software platforms partner with depots. The distinction, and who ends up holding the keys in each case, is the subject of what a third-party Cybercab depot is. The mistake to avoid is signing up for a “fleet management platform” and assuming it will handle operations. Software doesn’t sweep crumbs off the seat at 3am.

What to look for in a Cybercab depot

Eight things to verify before signing with any depot operator serving Cybercab fleets:

1. Physical security. Fenced lot. Gates. 24/7 cameras. Garage-keeper coverage for damage that happens while the car is in the depot’s care.
2. Charging infrastructure. How many chargers per car? Per-stall or shared rotation? Electricity passed through at depot rate, or marked up?
3. Cleaning cadence. Between every ride, or once per shift? What’s the standard? Riders complain about dirty interiors in driver-graded apps; that’s only worse on a fully autonomous platform where the rider is the only human accountable.
4. Dispatch integration. Tesla’s robotaxi network? The depot’s own off-peak network? Can the car switch between modes from a single dashboard? Can it do both at once? (It can’t (physically can’t be on two networks simultaneously) but a depot should clearly explain the switching logic.)
5. Incident response SLA. What happens at 2am when a rider damages the car? Who calls? How fast? Get the number in writing.
6. Exit terms. Month-to-month with notice, or a multi-year lock-in? Notice period to pull your car, in writing? (DockDuty’s own agreement caps vehicle-pickup and termination notice at 30 days.) Penalties? Final earnings payout timeline?
7. Insurance coverage. Garage-keeper coverage while in the lot. While the car is logged on to a ride network or on a prearranged ride, Florida requires at least $1 million in primary liability, plus PIP and uninsured/underinsured coverage, which the owner, the network or both can carry (FS §627.749). General business liability. Damage to the car itself (collision and comprehensive) is separate coverage on your own policy, so confirm you have it.
8. Reporting and transparency. Monthly statements. Dashboard with live data. Trip-level breakdowns. The depot is moving real money on your behalf; you should see it line by line.

A depot that can’t answer all eight of these clearly is not ready to run your fleet.

Geography matters

Where you park a fleet of Cybercabs affects what those cars earn. Robotaxi demand isn’t evenly distributed across the country. Cities with airports, theme parks, dense hotel inventory, and friendly autonomous-vehicle law generate more rides per car per day.

The top US markets for Cybercab fleet operations, as of October 2026:

1. San Francisco Bay Area. Densest ride volume in the country. Also the most competitive depot market.
2. Orlando, FL. Florida’s AV law (FS §316.85) is one of the most permissive in the country. MCO airport generates constant short-trip demand. The theme-park corridor (Disney, Universal, SeaWorld) needs ride coverage between resorts. Lake Nona is building a dense autonomous-vehicle hub, Beep (autonomous-shuttle company) is headquartered there. 120,000+ hotel rooms across the metro.
3. Phoenix, AZ. Waymo’s home market with the most mature commercial AV operations.
4. Austin, TX. Texas regulatory framework + Tesla’s Giga Texas presence.
5. Las Vegas, NV. The Strip is one of the densest short-trip demand patterns in the country.

Orlando in particular has structural advantages worth flagging: the AV law is settled, demand patterns are stable (theme-park, hotel, and airport ride volume don’t swing the way commuter markets do), and the surrounding metro (Lake Buena Vista, Sanford, Winter Park) reads as “Orlando” to most riders. If you can put your Cybercab fleet in Orlando, you’re parking it in one of the highest-utilization-density markets available.

What it costs to operate a fleet through a depot

Depot pricing varies by operator, so here is ours, as published on our pricing page as of October 2, 2026. DockDuty charges in two ways: a fixed monthly retainer per car and a service fee on each completed ride. Rates below are for the Priority round (the founding round closed September 5, 2026).

To reserve, you pay a $450 deposit per stall, credited in full against the $1,000 onboarding fee, so $550 is due at onboarding. Your $450 deposit is refundable at your request at any time before your vehicle is onboarded, with no reason or documentation required. If DockDuty publicly announces it will not open any depot, or ceases operations, outstanding deposits are refunded automatically within 30 days. The Reservation Agreement (§3) governs.

What DockDuty itself would charge per car, per month. These are our published fees only; we have not estimated revenue or net here.

We left out insurance, financing and maintenance because we could not find a published source for a Cybercab figure: Tesla has not published a Cybercab price or maintenance schedule, and no public source prices commercial coverage for a privately owned Cybercab yet. The owner carries the insurance and any vehicle financing; the depot does not. Florida requires at least $1 million primary liability for an autonomous car on a ride network (Fla. Stat. §627.749); see who insures what. Don’t take any pre-launch figure (including ours) as a promised return.

A note on the current state of the market

As of October 2026, no Cybercab depot is operating at scale yet. Tesla has not started customer Cybercab deliveries. As of September 2026 the Cybercab carries public riders only inside Tesla's own Austin fleet (public rides began September 4), and in its July 2026 shareholder update Tesla dropped its earlier guidance that Cybercab would reach volume production in 2026, with no new volume date (our delivery-timeline tracker follows the sourced dates). DockDuty is pre-launch, with owner reservations open. Operating data for privately owned Cybercabs will only exist once Tesla delivers to private owners, which our tracker reads as 2027 at the earliest.

Until then, every projection (ours, the software platforms’, anyone else’s) is based on the forward-looking target operating economics Tesla has stated publicly, comparable rideshare data, and assumptions about ride volume that will only be validated post-launch. Pick a depot whose pre-launch math is honest about what’s estimated and what’s measured.