Can I Lease My Land to Waymo or Tesla for a Robotaxi Depot?

Yes. But in most cities, the company that signs your lease will not be Waymo.

Waymo hands depot work to fleet partners. Moove runs its fleet in Phoenix and Miami and is responsible for facilities and charging infrastructure.¹ Avis Budget Group does the same job in Dallas, including depot operations.² In Nashville, Lyft’s fleet arm Flexdrive opened an 80,000-square-foot depot for Waymo vehicles on October 2, 2026.³

Tesla works the other way round. Permits for its Austin robotaxi charging site list Tesla, Inc. as the tenant.⁴ Uber, launching robotaxis with Nuro and Lucid, has secured a 50,000-square-foot depot in Houston and says it will run it with fleet partners.⁵

So the first question is not how to reach Waymo. It is who runs the fleet in your city, and what problem your site solves for them.

Who signs the lease, city by city

• Phoenix and Miami: Moove manages and dispatches the Waymo fleet, and takes on facilities and charging.¹
• Dallas: Avis Budget Group is Waymo’s fleet operations partner, covering infrastructure, maintenance and depot operations.²
• Nashville: Flexdrive by Lyft runs day-to-day operations for Waymo vehicles from its own depot, with fast charging and maintenance bays.³
• Austin: Tesla, Inc. is the listed tenant on an 82,107-square-foot lot planned for 48 fast-charging stalls, with a second phase sized for 80 wireless chargers.⁴
• Houston: Uber holds a 50,000-square-foot depot and a separate charging stop for a service planned for mid-2027.⁵

These line-ups change as operators add cities. Before you pitch, find the fleet partner named in the latest launch announcement for your city.

What does a depot need from the land?

No operator publishes its site criteria. The public record still shows a pattern.

• Size. The depots above run from 50,000 to 82,000 square feet, about 1.1 to 1.9 acres.^{3 4 5}
• Power. Nashville has dozens of fast chargers for hundreds of vehicles; Austin starts with 48.^{3 4} Ask your utility how much power the site can get, and how long an upgrade would take, before you talk to anyone else.
• Use. Charging, cleaning, maintenance and vehicles moving at all hours. Your zoning has to allow all of it, not just parking.
• Location. Close to where the rides are. Every mile between the depot and the riders is driven empty, which is the arithmetic in Six Lost Hours a Day.
• Security. Fencing, a gate, lighting and cameras. The Austin plans include motorized gates, bollards and 11 new light poles.⁴

What can go wrong?

The city. In November 2025, San Francisco’s Planning Commission approved Tesla’s plan to turn a public garage at 825 Sansome Street into a charging site, including chargers for an autonomous fleet. Teamsters Local 665 appealed, and eight supervisors signed on. Tesla dropped the project before the vote and cited building constraints unrelated to the appeal.⁶

An approval is not the end of the process. Check appeal windows, labor demands and neighbors before you count the rent.

Do I need two acres?

No. The big depots are where vehicles get serviced. Fleets also need smaller places near riders: staging lots, charging stops and pickup points. Flexdrive says it is already exploring more Nashville locations to cut rider wait times.³

A lot with a few dozen spaces inside the service area can be worth more to a fleet than a large yard at the edge. See What a Fleet Staging Lot Is and our Robotaxi Stand page for the smaller formats.

What should I send a fleet operator?

A one-page site package. Most owners never make one, which is why most sites never get considered.

• Address, parcel number, acreage or space count, and an aerial photo or site plan.
• Current zoning, and the uses already permitted: parking, automotive, EV charging.
• Electrical service today, and what the utility says you could add.
• Hours you can offer, how the gate works, and the security already in place.
• Distance to the nearest robotaxi service area and to demand spots like the airport, downtown and stations.
• Terms: lease length, whether you will fund improvements, and how either side can exit.

Our site brief fills in most of that from an address: land use, zoning, lot size, flood zone and chargers on site.

What we do not know

• Depot rents. No operator publishes them. Anyone quoting a robotaxi depot rate is quoting comparable truck yards or outdoor storage, not a robotaxi lease.
• Tesla has not announced the Austin site. What is known comes from permit filings.⁴
• Whether operators keep building a few large depots or add many small sites inside their zones. Flexdrive’s note about more Nashville locations is one early signal.³
• Partner line-ups are as of October 2026. They change as cities launch.

Own land or a lot in a robotaxi city? List your property free. Tell us its size, power and hours, and we will connect it with fleets that need a site there.