Michigan wrote the law first. Detroit rides next.
Michigan has permitted automated vehicles on public roads since 2016, with no requirement that a person sit in the car, one of the most permissive frameworks in the country. Waymo has announced Detroit but has not said when public rides will start. If you live in Ann Arbor or metro Detroit, the interesting question isn’t whether the law will allow this. It’s who ends up owning the vehicles, and this page is the honest version of how Michigan buyers get on that side of it with DockDuty today.
The honest status: no Detroit depot yet
Where DockDuty stands · September 2026
Orlando is our lead market, with its depot targeted for Q4 2026; the founding book (50 stalls, network-wide) sold out September 5, 2026, with reservations from all over the map. Capacity that opens next sells at Priority rates.
We are planning locations in several more metros at the same time, including depots in Miami and Tampa Bay. Beyond those, we expand wherever the Cybercab market opens.
Michigan is an unusual case on that map, because the part most states are still arguing about is already settled here. What decides Detroit is service arriving and demand we can point to. That’s exactly what the list further down this page is.
Market statusDemand open
Where Detroit stands in the DockDuty Network
- Status
- Demand open. Owners can elect this market at checkout and the count is published; nothing else is committed.
- Stall reservations naming Detroit
- No stall reservations name Detroit yet.
- What the count means
- One stall reservation is one Cybercab stall reserved with a paid or clearing $450 refundable deposit that names a preferred market. The count is stalls, not clients, and a reservation is not a vehicle on site or an operating stall. Unpaid, failed, cancelled and refunded checkouts never count. No DockDuty depot is operating anywhere yet.
- Depot status
- Owners can reserve and name this market. That records demand; it is not a depot project or a commitment to open.
- What would bring DockDuty to Detroit
DockDuty opens a market when enough reservations point at it to support a depot, a driverless service is carrying paying riders there or state law allows one, and a site with the power to charge the fleet is available. Orlando is the lead market, with its depot targeted for Q4 2026; DockDuty is planning locations in several more metros at the same time, including depots in Miami and Tampa Bay, with no site, lease or date yet.
- Enough Detroit reservations to support a depot.
- Michigan has allowed driverless operation since 2016, so the legal test is met.
- A driverless service carrying paying riders. Waymo has announced Detroit but has not published a launch date.
- What a Detroit site needs
- Space at depot scale: room to park, stage and clean a fleet, not a handful of spaces.
- Commercial power that can scale with the fleet.
- DC fast charging. The Cybercab charges DC-only through the NACS port and has no onboard AC charger.
- 24/7 access and staffing.
- Proximity to ride demand.
- Last reviewed
See every market’s status, the order book and the dataset this number comes from.
How many stall reservations name Detroit?
None yet (as of live count).
DockDuty publishes the current count of stall reservations naming Detroit on this page, dated to the day it was read from the reservation system. One stall reservation is one Cybercab stall reserved with a paid or clearing $450 refundable deposit that names a preferred market. The count is stalls, not clients, and a reservation is not a vehicle on site or an operating stall. Unpaid, failed, cancelled and refunded checkouts never count.
What would make DockDuty open a depot in Detroit?
DockDuty opens a market when enough reservations point at it to support a depot, a driverless service is carrying paying riders there or state law allows one, and a site with the power to charge the fleet is available. Orlando is the lead market, with its depot targeted for Q4 2026; DockDuty is planning locations in several more metros at the same time, including depots in Miami and Tampa Bay, with no site, lease or date yet.
Can I offer a site or a lot in Detroit?
Yes. Use the site form on the DockDuty Network page and name Detroit. A Detroit site needs space at depot scale, commercial power that can scale, DC fast charging (the Cybercab charges DC-only through the NACS port and has no onboard AC charger), 24/7 access and staffing, and proximity to ride demand.
Priority stalls are open from Michigan
Every stall sells at our Priority rates with a $450 refundable deposit, in every metro we list. Reserve a Priority stall, elect Detroit, MI in the flow, and your spot is a Priority spot this round.
You don't have to wait for a Detroit dock
DockDuty is an own-from-anywhere platform, and the reservation attaches to the network, not to one city:
- Reserve a Priority stall today: Priority stall reservations are open in every metro we list. Orlando is our lead market, with its depot targeted for Q4 2026; no depot is open yet. The $450 deposit is taken at checkout, is fully refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded and credited in full against the $1,000 onboarding fee.
- When DockDuty announces the next depot with capacity for your stall, you have 30 days to tell us in writing whether to onboard there, keep waiting for a depot in your market, or take a refund. If you don’t reply, you’re set to onboard at that depot. Once your car is onboarded, we’ll park, charge, clean, and dispatch; you watch it from Ann Arbor or Detroit on the same dashboard our founding clients use today.
- Elect Detroit, MI as your preferred market right in the reservation flow. When the network reaches your city, your preference is already on file.
Stalls go at our Priority schedule ($550, $525, $500 and $475) with the same $450 refundable deposit. The full rate card is on the homepage.
Want the money math first? Run the Cybercab earnings calculator: set your assumptions, see the full fee breakdown, and have your exact scenario emailed to you. Projections, not guarantees: nobody has fleet-scale Cybercab earnings history yet, including us.
We also track every live US robotaxi market on the US Robotaxi Map, jump to Detroit, updated as markets open and free for anyone to cite.
The Detroit list
Where we build next is a demand question, and this list is the demand. Join it and two things happen: you get one email if a Michigan depot moves from roadmap to real, and your interest is counted when we pick the next metro. No drip sequence, and one-click unsubscribe.
Stalls are open in Detroit, MI right now, become a Priority client for $450 per cab, fully refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded.
What about Hamtramck, Highland Park, and the other suburbs?
People in metro Detroit have been searching this by town for months, so here is the straight version. No robotaxi serves any of them today. Not Hamtramck or Highland Park, the two independent cities that sit entirely inside Detroit’s footprint (they border each other, and Detroit wraps around everything else), and not Hazel Park, Eastpointe, Oak Park, Ferndale, Royal Oak, Dearborn or Ann Arbor either. Since October 6, 2026, Waymo has run fully driverless rides in Detroit for its own employees only (WDIV, October 6, 2026); it has announced public service but not a date, and no launch zone has been published.
What the other metros tell you is the shape to expect rather than the date. Service opens as a geofenced core and widens in steps; it doesn’t cover a metro all at once. Tesla launched Orlando on the airport corridor in July 2026, and the northern suburbs there are still outside the boundary six weeks later. Applied to Detroit, that means a dense core first and the ring cities after, in an order nobody has announced.
If you’re reading this as a rider, that’s the whole answer and the map is where we keep it current. If you’re reading it as a would-be owner, your suburb matters much less than you’d think. Your reservation attaches to the DockDuty network, not to one city, so a Hamtramck owner and a Royal Oak owner have exactly the same economics.
Why Michigan matters to a depot company
Most metros we write about got their driverless service before their legislature finished arguing. Michigan did it the other way around. The 2016 package permits automated vehicles on public roads with nobody inside, and creates a path for on-demand self-driving networks where the vehicles are supplied or controlled by a motor vehicle manufacturer. That last clause is worth reading twice if you plan to own a Cybercab here: the gate in Michigan isn’t the statute, it’s the manufacturer’s own owner program. We track that question on the Cybercab page, dated fact by dated fact.
The engineering has been here even longer. Ann Arbor has run Mcity at the University of Michigan since 2015, the first purpose-built proving ground for connected and automated vehicles, and the American Center for Mobility sits on the old Willow Run site in Ypsilanti. Detroit is where this industry keeps its engineers. What none of that infrastructure covers is the boring part after a vehicle is validated and sold: where it parks, charges, and gets cleaned between fares. That layer is what a robotaxi depot actually does, and it’s the layer DockDuty is building.
One thing Michigan buyers should know: Waymo’s announced Detroit service will be Waymo’s own fleet. The Cybercab (the car individual owners will put on a network) has no public order book yet. That’s the window, and electing Detroit in the reserve flow is the clearest signal we get about where the network goes next. The dated map of every live robotaxi metro is where we keep score.
Is there a robotaxi depot in Detroit?
Not a DockDuty one: DockDuty has no depot in Detroit and has not announced one. DockDuty collects Detroit owner reservations as demand, not as a commitment; the status of every market is on the DockDuty Network page. No robotaxi company has published a depot location in metro Detroit as of October 1, 2026. The nearest thing on the record, a Waymo vehicle plant in Detroit, closed in the first quarter of 2025.
Nothing in Michigan has a row in the US robotaxi depot database (checked October 1, 2026). Two Waymo sites are on the public record, and neither is a depot:
- Waymo’s Detroit plant (closed). Announced in 2019 as the “world’s first 100% dedicated Level 4 autonomous vehicle factory”, the 200,000 square foot plant, leased from American Axle and run with Magna, stopped operating in the first quarter of 2025. Waymo said its newer integration plant with Magna in Mesa, Arizona would handle its fleet scaling instead (Crain’s Detroit Business via Yahoo Finance, June 25, 2025). That Mesa plant has its own row in the depot database.
- Waymo’s Novi office (engineering, not a depot). Waymo says it has had an engineering team in Novi “for many years” and has regularly tested in Detroit in winter weather (Waymo, November 3, 2025). The same Crain’s report says the office opened in 2016, and Waymo called it critical to its engineering work on hardware testing, supplier relationships and winter-weather driving. Neither source describes it as a place where a ride-hail fleet parks or charges.
Robotaxis in Detroit: what is live and what is only announced
As of October 10, 2026, metro Detroit has no public driverless rides. Waymo runs fully driverless rides there for its employees only and has announced a public service but not a date, and the city’s own autonomous shuttle pilot ended in June 2025. Dated, with sources:
- Waymo: announced, employee-only driverless rides since October 6. Waymo announced Detroit on November 3, 2025 (“Waymo is headed to Motown!”) and said it would get to know the city’s streets ahead of serving riders (Waymo, November 3, 2025). In April 2026 it was testing with a trained specialist at the wheel, planned to move to fully driverless operation later in the year, and had not said when public rides would start (Axios Detroit, April 28, 2026). On October 1, 2026, Waymo’s own city list still shows Detroit under “Up Next”, not among the cities it serves (Waymo, read October 1, 2026). On October 6, 2026, Waymo began fully driverless rides in Detroit, available only to Waymo employees, with no public launch date (WDIV, October 6, 2026).
- Tesla: nothing announced for Detroit. Michigan does not appear in the “Announced Robotaxi Coverage” table of Tesla’s Q2 2026 shareholder update (Tesla Q2 2026 update, as filed with the SEC).
- The city’s own autonomous shuttle: a pilot that ended in June 2025. Detroit’s Office of Mobility Innovation ran Accessibili-D, a free shuttle for residents over 62 or living with disabilities, from June 2024, using three May Mobility vehicles across an 11-square-mile area of southeast Detroit, with a trained safety operator always behind the wheel. The city set the final ride for June 30, 2025 and said it would seek a long-term contract (City of Detroit, May 23, 2025). It was a shuttle with an operator aboard, not a driverless robotaxi.
What that means for a Michigan owner. Tesla puts its position in writing: version 1.5 of its Robotaxi first responder guide, dated September 3, 2026, says “All Robotaxi vehicles are owned and operated by Tesla at this time” (Tesla, Robotaxi First Responder Interaction Plan), and it has not published terms for owners. DockDuty counts a Detroit reservation as demand for this metro, not as a decision to build here.
Michigan’s robotaxi law, and a local shield that ends in 2027
Michigan’s permission is one sentence of the vehicle code: “An automated motor vehicle may be operated on a street or highway in this state” (MCL 257.665(4)). When the automated driving system is engaged, it is treated as the driver for traffic-law purposes; the section was rewritten by the 2016 package (2016 PA 332) and amended again in 2022. A driverless ride-hail service is what the code calls an on-demand automated motor vehicle network, and one may be operated on Michigan highways, roads and streets (MCL 257.606b(1)). The fleets in such a network are defined as cars in a manufacturer’s SAVE project or cars “supplied or controlled by a motor vehicle manufacturer” (MCL 257.2b), and a SAVE project requires every car in it to be owned or controlled by the manufacturer (MCL 257.665b). The code does not say how a privately owned car dispatched by a manufacturer fits those words; that is a question for a Michigan lawyer.
The line a metro Detroit owner should note is the end date. “A local unit of government shall not impose a local fee, registration, franchise, or regulation upon an on-demand automated motor vehicle network,” the code says, and the next sentence reads: “This subsection does not apply after December 31, 2027” (MCL 257.606b(2)). Until then, Detroit, Hamtramck, Ann Arbor and the rest of the metro cannot put their own fees or rules on a driverless ride-hail network; as the statute reads today, that protection lapses at the end of 2027. Day to day, oversight is split: Axios reported in April 2026 that local police enforce traffic law while NHTSA regulates vehicle safety (Axios Detroit, April 28, 2026). The state-by-state comparison, Michigan included, is on robotaxi laws by state. None of this is legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
Does a robotaxi serve Hamtramck, Hazel Park, or the other Detroit suburbs?
Not yet, and not anywhere else in metro Detroit either. Waymo has run fully driverless rides in Detroit for its own employees only since October 6, 2026 (WDIV) and has announced Detroit, but it has not published a public launch date or a launch zone, so nobody can honestly tell you today whether Hamtramck, Highland Park, Hazel Park, Eastpointe, Oak Park, Ferndale, Royal Oak, Dearborn or Ann Arbor will be inside it. What the other metros show is the shape to expect: service opens as a geofenced core and widens in steps rather than covering a metro at once. Tesla launched Orlando on the airport corridor in July 2026 and the northern suburbs are still outside that boundary six weeks later. If you are looking at this as an owner rather than a rider, your suburb matters less than you would think, because your reservation attaches to the DockDuty network, not to one city.
Does Michigan law allow robotaxis?
Yes, and it has for years. Michigan’s 2016 legislative package permits automated vehicles to operate on public roads and does not require a person to be inside the vehicle, which puts it among the most permissive states in the country. The same package created a path for on-demand self-driving networks, with the vehicles supplied or controlled by a motor vehicle manufacturer. So the open question for a Michigan Cybercab owner is not the statute. It is when Tesla opens owner participation and when service reaches the metro, Waymo has announced Detroit but has not published a launch date.
Is there a DockDuty depot in Detroit or Ann Arbor?
Not yet, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Orlando is our lead market, with its depot targeted for Q4 2026, and we are planning locations in several more metros at the same time, including depots in Miami and Tampa Bay. Beyond those, we expand wherever the Cybercab market opens. Michigan is unusual on that map because the legal work is already done, so what decides Detroit is service arriving and owner demand we can point to. Registering Detroit interest directly shapes where we build next.
Can I own a Cybercab from Michigan before a Detroit depot exists?
Yes, that’s the point of own-from-anywhere. Your reservation attaches to the DockDuty network, not to one city. Today that means a Priority stall, reservable from any metro we list (same $450 refundable deposit). When DockDuty announces the next depot with capacity for your stall, you have 30 days to tell us in writing whether to onboard there, keep waiting for a depot in your market, or take a refund. If you don’t reply, you’re set to onboard at that depot. In the reservation flow you can elect Detroit, MI as your preferred market.
How much could a Cybercab make?
Nobody has fleet-scale Cybercab earnings history yet (including us) so treat every number anyone quotes as a projection. The earnings calculator shows the full fee math for your assumptions and can email you your exact scenario.
Michigan settled the law years ago. Own the next wave.
Reserve a Priority stall today, elect Detroit as your preferred market, and take a Priority spot this round: $450 deposit, fully refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded, credited in full against the $1,000 onboarding fee.
When the depot opens, owners drop off the car and get monthly statements.