Where to park your fleet of Cybercabs.

Tesla has begun delivering Cybercabs. The most common question we hear from new owners 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. 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.
2. Charging: On-site charging infrastructure capable of keeping every car in the fleet topped up. 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: Pushing the car onto the right network at the right time. Tesla’s robotaxi network during peak demand. The depot operator’s own off-peak networks (parcel runs, hotel shuttles, etc.) when peak ride volume drops.
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 Robotaxi Depot (despite the name, primarily a software platform), Spruce, and a handful of others entering the market in 2026.

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 a depot operator opening its first dock in Orlando in Q3 2026, with Miami next on a demand trigger (~80% Orlando reservations, 5–10 stalls left of 50), Tampa following, and a cascade that extends beyond Florida as the Cybercab service area opens in new states. 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 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 (7 days is reasonable; 30 days starts to feel coercive). Penalties? Final earnings payout timeline?
7. Insurance coverage. Garage-keeper coverage while in the lot. TNC contingent coverage during dispatch (Florida operators reference FS §627.748). General business liability. Your commercial AV policy covers the vehicle itself.
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 mid-2026:

1. San Francisco Bay Area. Densest ride volume in the country. Also the most competitive depot market.
2. Orlando, FL. FS §316.85 is the most permissive AV law 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 — Kissimmee, Lake Buena Vista, Sanford — 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

A depot operator serving Cybercab fleets typically charges in two ways:

• Monthly retainer per stall. Fixed monthly fee for the spot plus the operational layer. Typical range: $300–$500/stall/month at small fleet sizes, dropping with fleet count. The retainer covers stall, charging electricity (passed through at depot rate), cleaning, dispatch coordination, incident response, and software access.
• Per-ride platform fee. Percentage of each completed trip. Typical range: 10–15% depending on operator and fleet size. Larger fleets earn lower per-ride fees as a growth incentive.

The owner’s monthly overhead that the depot does not cover:

• Commercial AV insurance: $400–$800/month per car depending on coverage limits and driving record. The AV insurance market is small — most generalist brokers can’t write these policies, so a good depot helps connect owners with pre-vetted brokers.
• Vehicle financing: roughly $500–$700/month for a financed Cybercab at current rates (cash buyers skip this line).
• Annual maintenance reserves: tires, occasional sensor recalibration, body work after at-fault rider incidents.

A typical all-in monthly cost stack — depot retainer + per-ride platform fee + insurance + financing — runs roughly $1,200–$1,700/month per Cybercab. Whether that’s covered by the cars’ earnings depends on ride volume, Tesla’s eventual fare structure, and operational uptime — all of which are pre-launch unknowns. Don’t take any pre-launch projection (including this one) as a guaranteed return.

A note on the current state of the market

As of mid-2026, no Cybercab depot is operating at scale yet. Tesla only began Cybercab deliveries recently, in waves. Most depot operators — including DockDuty — are pre-launch with founding-customer reservations open. The Q3 2026 window is when the first real operational data will start to exist.

Until then, every projection — ours, the software platforms’, anyone else’s — is based on Tesla’s published target operating economics, 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.