Waymo has leased three DC depots. The law hasn’t let it carry a rider yet.

Waymo announced Washington, DC in March 2025 with riders promised for 2026. As of September 1, 2026, waymo.com lists the District under Up Next with no date, every Waymo and Zoox test mile in DC still has an operator behind the wheel, and the only bill that would change that, B26-0684, had its hearing on July 13 and no vote. Cross the 14th Street Bridge and the statute changes again: Virginia continued its bill to 2027, Maryland’s died in April. If you live in Arlington, Bethesda, Silver Spring or Alexandria, this page is the honest version of what that means if the side of the trade you care about is owning the cars.

The honest status: no Washington depot yet

You don’t have to live inside the line

DockDuty is an own-from-anywhere platform, and the reservation attaches to the network, not to one city:

• Reserve a stall today — $450, fully refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded, credited in full against the $1,000 onboarding fee.
• Your car will earn at depot #1 in Greater Orlando. We’ll park, charge, clean, and dispatch; you watch it from Arlington or Bethesda on the same dashboard our founding owners use today.
• Elect Washington, DC as your preferred market right in the reservation flow — when the network reaches your part of the map, your preference is already on file.

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 Washington, updated as markets open and free for anyone to cite.

What about Arlington, Bethesda, Silver Spring, and the rest of the metro?

The DC metro is the only one on this site where a robotaxi changes legal regime by crossing a bridge, so the suburb answer is really three answers. In the District, D.C. Code § 50-2352.01 gives DDOT a testing program and nothing more: every test must have an operator behind the wheel, Waymo and Zoox are the two companies that have notified DDOT of testing, Tesla is not on the list, and DDOT’s own April 2026 policy report offers no recommendations yet. In Virginia, Waymo began mapping Alexandria on May 20, 2026 with human-driven cars, with Arlington to follow, and said it has no immediate plans to launch service there. SB 670, the bill that would license driverless commercial operation, passed the Senate 35 to 4 on February 12, 2026 and was continued to the 2027 session by the House Transportation Committee on March 5; its sponsor expects the first vehicles on Virginia roads in 2028 at the earliest, and a state work group owes its report by November 1, 2026. In Maryland, the General Assembly adjourned on April 13, 2026 without passing SB 909 or HB 1295, so driverless operation is unauthorized statewide; Waymo’s only announced Maryland market is Baltimore, where it is mapping with humans driving, and it has said it will be back in Annapolis in 2027. So Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, Gaithersburg and College Park are a Maryland question, Tysons, Reston, Fairfax, Falls Church and McLean are a Virginia question, and the answer in both today is no vehicles and no framework.

The airports make the point sharper. Reagan National sits in Arlington County, Virginia, five miles from downtown, on federal land that Congress placed under Virginia jurisdiction; Dulles is in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, 26 miles west; BWI is in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, 32 miles northeast. A DC-only law cannot reach a single one of the region’s three airports. That is not a knock on the bill, it is the geography, and it is why the region’s rollout gets decided in three buildings, not one. The pattern from every other metro is a dense core first, widening in steps — Orlando’s launch zone still excludes its northern suburbs weeks in.

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, the line matters much less than you’d think. The car earns at the depot, not at your address — an Arlington owner and a Capitol Hill owner have exactly the same economics.

Why Washington matters to a depot company

The District is the one place in the country where the robotaxi rulebook is being written in public with a price list attached. B26-0684, the Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Authorization Amendment Act of 2026, was introduced on May 1, 2026 by Councilmember Charles Allen with Brooke Pinto and Matthew Frumin, and had its hearing before the Committee on Transportation and the Environment on July 13, 2026, with 81 witnesses across 17 panels. As introduced it charges a $1 million application fee and a $5 million fee for a three-year commercial permit, taxes every mile driven under that permit at 15 cents, requires 250,000 test miles inside the District over at least 180 days, limits each operator to 200 vehicles until DDOT approves its comprehensive plan (the sponsors describe that as a cap until January 1, 2028), and allows an app-dispatched on-demand network no earlier than January 1, 2028. The chair indicated the Council would spend the summer refining it with stakeholders; as of August 31 the vote was not on the calendar and the bill is expected back before the Council this fall. Waymo has said it is pushing back on the 200-vehicle limit. Where your state falls on that spectrum is its own question, answered state by state here.

Here is the part a depot company notices. Waymo has told the Council it has mapped all eight wards and logged hundreds of thousands of autonomous miles in preparation for serving the District, with an operator in the seat the whole time, and that it has committed tens of millions of dollars to service centers and charging in Wards 5 and 7. On August 6, 2026 it leased a third DC location, its largest locally, a 32,000-square-foot charging and maintenance facility in Northeast DC across from a Metrobus depot. Zoox has been mapping central DC with safety drivers since fall 2025. Three sites, hundreds of thousands of miles, zero paying riders, because the depot comes first and the statute comes second. That is the sequence we are running in Greater Orlando, and it is the layer this company sells: the stall, the charging, the cleaning, the dispatch — what a robotaxi depot actually does. The buyers are here too: the District’s EV share of new registrations hit 16.3% in the fourth quarter of 2025, second only to California and two and a half times the national rate, per the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

One thing Washington buyers should know: every robotaxi test mile in the District today belongs to Waymo or Zoox, and neither can sell you a seat. Tesla is not among the companies that have notified DDOT of testing, its paid driverless service runs only in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa, and the Cybercab a reader photographed on Connecticut Avenue on July 1, 2026 was a sighting, not a service; Tesla’s own app copy for DC says rides will come “in the future.” The Cybercab — the car individual owners will put on a network — has no public order book yet. That’s the window: how to be ready on day one. Electing Washington in the reserve flow is the clearest signal we get about where the network goes after Florida.

Frequently asked questions

Does a robotaxi serve Arlington, Bethesda, Silver Spring, or the DC suburbs?

No, and not inside the District either, as of September 1, 2026. DC allows testing only, with an operator behind the wheel for every mile (D.C. Code § 50-2352.01); Waymo and Zoox are the companies that have notified DDOT. Virginia has no driverless framework: SB 670 passed the Senate 35 to 4 on February 12, 2026 and was continued to the 2027 session on March 5, and Waymo, which began mapping Alexandria on May 20, 2026 with human-driven cars and Arlington after it, says it has no immediate plans to launch service in the state. Maryland’s SB 909 and HB 1295 died when the General Assembly adjourned on April 13, 2026, so Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, Gaithersburg and College Park have no legal path today; Waymo’s only Maryland activity is human-driven mapping in Baltimore. If you are looking at this as an owner rather than a rider, the line matters less than you would think, because the car earns at the depot and not at your address.

Are robotaxis legal in Washington, DC?

Testing is; carrying passengers is not, yet. D.C. Law 23-156, effective December 23, 2020, replaced the 2012 driver-in-the-seat rule with a DDOT testing program, and DDOT reads that program as requiring an operator behind the wheel ready to take over. The bill that would add deployment authority, B26-0684, was introduced May 1, 2026, heard July 13, 2026, and had not been marked up or voted on as of September 1, 2026. As introduced it charges $1 million to apply and $5 million for a three-year permit, taxes commercial autonomous miles at 15 cents each, requires 250,000 District test miles over at least 180 days, limits each operator to 200 vehicles until DDOT approves its plan, and allows an on-demand robotaxi network no earlier than January 1, 2028. The Council is expected to take it up this fall.

Can you take a robotaxi to Reagan National, Dulles, or BWI?

Not today, and a DC law alone would not change that. Reagan National sits in Arlington County, Virginia, on federal land that Congress placed under Virginia jurisdiction; Dulles is in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, Virginia; BWI is in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. All three sit outside the District, so airport service waits on Virginia and Maryland statutes as well as the airports’ own rules. No operator has announced airport service anywhere in the region.

Is there a DockDuty depot in Washington, DC?

Not yet — and we won’t pretend otherwise. Depot #1 is targeted to open in Greater Orlando in Q4 2026, and our published roadmap is Florida-first (Miami on the ~80% trigger, Tampa following). From there we expand wherever the Cybercab market opens. The District is a strong candidate on the merits: an operator already leasing charging and maintenance sites here, a Council bill with a written clock, and an EV share of new registrations that hit 16.3% in the fourth quarter of 2025, second only to California. Registering Washington interest directly shapes where we build next.

Can I own a Cybercab from DC, Maryland or Virginia before a Washington depot exists?

Yes — that’s the point of own-from-anywhere. Your reservation attaches to the DockDuty network, not to one city. Reserve a stall today ($450, fully refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded), your car will earn at depot #1 in Greater Orlando while you watch from Arlington or Bethesda. In the reservation flow you can elect Washington, DC 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.

The bill will move. Ownership doesn’t have to wait for it.

Reserve a network stall for $450 — fully refundable until your Cybercab is onboarded, credited in full against the $1,000 onboarding fee. Elect Washington as your preferred market in the flow.

Reserve a stall — $450, refundable Run the earnings math

Own from anywhere — the car earns at the depot. You don't have to live in Florida, or even in the US.