New York hasn’t legalized a single driverless mile. We still want in the day it does.
Here is the honest version, because you will not get it from anyone selling you a launch date. New York’s only autonomous-vehicle law is a 2017 supervised-testing program that requires a licensed driver in the driver’s seat, extended in this year’s budget to April 1, 2028. New York City adds its own DOT permit on top, and TLC rules bar autonomous vehicles from for-hire service outright. The Governor’s January 2026 proposal to allow commercial robotaxis excluded New York City and was withdrawn five weeks later. Nobody can tell you when that changes. What we can tell you is what a New York owner can do about it today, which is more than nothing.
The honest status: no New York depot, no permit, no date
Where DockDuty stands · September 2026
Depot #1 is targeted to open in Greater Orlando in Q4 2026 — its first 50 stalls already reserved. Capacity that opens next sells at Priority Owner rates.
We have no New York site, no lease, no permit and no date, and this page is not a launch announcement. New York is on the board because we want to be built before the law moves, not scrambling after it.
Worth being precise about what is actually blocked. A depot is a place to park, charge, clean and dispatch cars, and none of that needs an AV permit. What New York prohibits is the car driving itself for hire. The depot is not waiting on our paperwork. It is waiting on Albany — and on the day Albany moves, the depot is the thing that has to already exist.
Reserve New York now, run the car somewhere open in the meantime
$450 per stall, fully refundable. Elect New York and you hold a place in the order book at today’s Priority Owner rate. You are not required to leave the car idle while the state makes up its mind: move your election to any open metro, earn there, and move it back when New York opens. No fee, no new paperwork, same day.
Hold the place, move the car
This is the part that makes a New York reservation rational instead of dead money, and it is not a marketing promise — it is in the reservation agreement itself, which you read and sign at checkout before any money moves. Section 1.3: the reservation attaches to the network, not to any particular city. Section 1.4: you may name a different preferred market by written notice, and your stalls, your order-book position and your rate protections all continue unchanged.
- Reserve a Priority Owner stall today and elect New York. The $450 deposit is refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded, and credited in full against the $1,000 onboarding fee when it is.
- Move your election to an open metro whenever you want. Orlando Depot #2 is open now; every other metro on our board has its own book. Email us and we move it the same day, at no charge. Your car parks, charges, cleans and earns there while New York waits.
- Move it back when the law opens. Same mechanism, same lack of a fee. You keep the position you bought today rather than joining the back of a line that forms the week New York legalizes.
- Or take the money back. The deposit is refundable at any point before onboarding. That is the protection, and it is the reason we can be blunt on this page about having no idea when New York moves.
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.
Where every other state stands is its own question, answered state by state on the robotaxi law tracker, and we keep the live markets on the US Robotaxi Map.
The New York list
One email if New York’s law actually moves, or if a New York depot goes from roadmap to real. That is the whole list. No drip sequence, and one-click unsubscribe.
Not ready to put a deposit down? Request a free Priority Reservation as well — elect New York, NY as your preferred market in the flow.
What about Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island and the suburbs?
Today the answer is the same everywhere, which is unusual for this site: the whole state is closed, so Buffalo and Bushwick are in the same room. Westchester, Long Island, northern New Jersey and Connecticut are separate statehouses with their own answers, and none of them has a driverless commercial framework either. There is no line to be inside or outside of yet.
When that changes, New York opens as one market and boroughs come later. The first New York depot serves the metro; borough-level depots follow when a borough has enough owner demand to fill one, which is the same 50-stall trigger every metro on our board uses. We would rather run one real depot well than announce five and open none.
If you are reading this as a would-be owner rather than a rider, your address matters less than you would think in any case. The car earns at the depot, not at your address. A Park Slope owner and a Poughkeepsie owner have identical economics, and both can be earning in Orlando next year while New York is still in committee.
Why New York matters to a depot company
New York is the hardest robotaxi market in the country to serve and the most valuable one to have solved. Roughly half of New York City households own no car at all, which is exactly the demand a robotaxi network is built for, and the same density that creates that demand makes the supply side brutal: there is nowhere to put the cars. A robotaxi does not go home at night. It has to park, charge, get cleaned, and be back out at 6am, and in a city where a parking space is a real-estate transaction, that overnight problem is the whole business rather than a footnote to it.
That is the layer this company sells — what a robotaxi depot actually does — and it is why we would rather have the New York book open years early than start the search the month a bill passes. The pattern everywhere else has been depots first, statute second: Waymo leased three Washington DC facilities before DC had authorized a single paying ride. When New York moves, the operators who already have a place to put the cars will be the ones who can move with it.
One thing New York buyers should know, plainly. No company is publicly known to be testing autonomously on a New York City street today. Waymo held the city’s first and only AV testing permit, granted in August 2025 for eight vehicles with safety drivers in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn; it expired on March 31, 2026 and has not been renewed. Tesla was reported to be hiring test drivers in Flushing in August 2025 without having applied for either permit, and has announced no New York service. The Cybercab — the car individual owners will actually put on a network — has no public order book yet. Everyone is early here. That is the window.
Frequently asked questions
Are robotaxis legal in New York City?
No — not in the five boroughs and not anywhere else in the state. New York’s only autonomous-vehicle authority is the supervised-testing program created by Chapter 55 of the Laws of 2017, which requires a licensed driver in the driver’s seat ready to take over and a $5 million insurance policy; the enacted FY2026-27 budget did nothing to it except extend its expiration to April 1, 2028. New York City layers its own DOT testing permit on top of the state one, and TLC rules bar autonomous vehicles from for-hire service outright, so even a fully permitted test vehicle cannot legally pick up a paying rider. Governor Hochul proposed legalizing commercial robotaxi deployment on January 13, 2026, explicitly excluding New York City, and withdrew the proposal on February 19, 2026 for lack of legislative support. The only AV bill pending as of September 2026, S10473, is a driverless pilot limited to Albany and Rensselaer counties and is still in committee.
Then why can I reserve a New York stall today?
Because a reservation is a place in line, not a parking pass. The deposit is $450 per stall and it is fully refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded, and the reservation attaches to the DockDuty network rather than to one city — Section 1.3 of the reservation agreement says so in those words. You are buying priority in the order book for the day New York opens, at today’s Priority Owner rate rather than whatever the rate is years from now.
What does my car do while New York waits?
It earns somewhere else, if you want it to. Section 1.4 of the reservation agreement lets you name a different preferred market by written notice at any time, keeping your stalls, your order-book position and your rate protections unchanged. In practice that means you elect New York now, and any time before your car is onboarded you can move that election to Orlando or any other open metro, run the car there, and move it back when New York opens. Email us and we make the change the same day. It costs nothing, there is no transfer fee, and you can also simply take the deposit back instead.
Does DockDuty have a New York depot, a lease, or a permit?
No — no site, no lease, no permit, and no date. Nothing on this page is a launch announcement. It is worth being precise about what is actually blocked, though: a depot is a place to park, charge and clean cars, and none of that requires an AV permit. What New York law prohibits is the car driving itself for hire. So the depot is not waiting on our paperwork, it is waiting on Albany, and the day the law changes the depot is the thing that has to already exist.
When do Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island get their own depots?
Later, and deliberately so. New York is one market on the board today, and the first New York depot will serve the metro rather than a borough. Borough-level depots come after the law opens and after there is enough demand in a borough to fill one, the same 50-stall trigger every other metro uses. Electing New York today counts toward that either way, because the car earns at the depot and not at your address.
Is Tesla launching robotaxi service in New York?
Not that anyone has announced. Tesla was reported to be hiring autonomous-driving test drivers in Flushing, Queens in August 2025 but had not applied for either the state DMV or the New York City DOT permit, and no NY permit application, service area, or launch statement has surfaced since. Waymo held New York City’s first and so far only AV testing permit, granted in August 2025 for eight vehicles with safety drivers; it expired on March 31, 2026 and has not been renewed. As of September 2026 no company is publicly known to be testing autonomously on a New York City street.