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 The Governor’s January 2026 proposal to allow commercial robotaxis excluded New York City and was withdrawn five weeks later.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
Orlando is our lead market, with its depot targeted for Q4 2026; the founding book (50 stalls, network-wide) sold out September 5, 2026. Capacity that opens next sells at Priority 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.
Market statusDemand open
Where New York 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 New York
- No stall reservations name New York 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. No state driverless law yet. A reservation holds a place in line.
- What would bring DockDuty to New York
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.
- A New York law that allows driverless for-hire service. The state’s only autonomous-vehicle law is a supervised-testing program, and New York City rules bar autonomous vehicles from for-hire service.
- Enough New York reservations to support a depot. The depot itself needs no AV permit: what New York prohibits is the car driving itself for hire.
- What a New York 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 New York?
None yet (as of live count).
DockDuty publishes the current count of stall reservations naming New York 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 New York?
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 New York?
Yes. Use the site form on the DockDuty Network page and name New York. A New York 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.
Reserve New York now, decide where to onboard when a depot is announced
$450 per stall, fully refundable on request any time before onboarding. Elect New York and you hold a place in the order book, with the Priority rate schedule and rate protections in Section 4. When DockDuty announces the next depot with capacity for your stalls, you have 30 days to tell us in writing whether to onboard there, keep waiting for New York, or take a refund. If you don’t reply, you are set to onboard at that depot (Section 1.4).
Hold your place, choose where to onboard
Here is how a New York reservation works under the agreement you read and sign at checkout, before any money moves. Your reservation attaches to the DockDuty network, not to any particular city (Section 1.3). When DockDuty announces the next depot with capacity for your stalls, 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 are set to onboard at that depot (Section 1.4). Your deposit stays refundable on request any time before onboarding (Section 3.1).
- Reserve a Priority 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.
- Onboard at the announced depot, if you want to. Orlando is our lead market, with its depot targeted for Q4 2026; no depot is open yet. You make that choice in writing within 30 days of DockDuty announcing the next depot with capacity for your stalls; if you don’t reply, this is the option that applies.
- Or keep waiting for New York. Your stalls, your order-book positions and your Section 4 rate protections continue unchanged (Section 1.4), so you keep your place in the order book instead of 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
An email if New York’s law actually moves, or if a New York depot goes from roadmap to real, plus a short welcome email now and our occasional owner update. No drip sequence, and one-click unsubscribe.
Stalls are open in New York, NY right now, become a Priority client for $450 per cab, fully refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded.
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 demand 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. A Park Slope owner and a Poughkeepsie owner have identical economics, and both hold a reservation that attaches to the DockDuty network, not to New York (whose bill is still in committee). When DockDuty announces the next depot with capacity for their stalls, each has 30 days to tell us in writing whether to onboard there, keep waiting for a depot in their market, or take a refund. If either doesn’t reply, that owner is set to onboard at that depot.
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, not to any particular city: Section 1.3 of the reservation agreement says so in those words. It holds your place in the order book, with the Priority rate schedule and rate protections in Section 4. DockDuty assigns no value to reservation positions and makes no market in them (Section 5.3).
What does my car do while New York waits?
If you’d rather not wait, you can onboard at another depot when DockDuty announces one with capacity for your stalls. Your reservation attaches to the DockDuty network, not to any particular city (Section 1.3). When DockDuty announces the next depot with capacity for your stalls, 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 are set to onboard at that depot (Section 1.4). If you keep waiting, your stalls, your order-book positions and your rate protections continue unchanged (Section 1.4). Your deposit stays refundable on request any time before onboarding (Section 3.1).
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 demand trigger every metro on our board uses. Electing New York today counts toward that either way, whatever your borough.
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.