This week it became clear that the presentation of Tesla’s long-awaited driverless taxi has been postponed from August 8 to October 10, and the company will use this pause to make some changes to the design of the car. All attempts by analysts to find out from Elon Musk at the quarterly conference whether it would be equipped with a steering wheel and pedals were unsuccessful.
Image Source: Tesla
The need to obtain approvals from federal regulators determines the timing of the possible appearance of the Tesla Cybercab on public roads in the United States, as The Verge explains. Under current regulations, an automaker that wants to put a vehicle on U.S. roads without a steering wheel, pedals, or rearview mirrors must apply to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for an exception to the FMVSS regulations. An automaker that receives such an exemption can put no more than 2,500 “non-standard” vehicles on US roads during the year that the exemption is in effect.
Accordingly, if Tesla wanted to release vehicles without a steering wheel or pedals, it could supply no more than 2,500 such cars per year to the US market. If this requirement is not revised by the country’s authorities, this will greatly limit Tesla’s ability to expand its fleet of unmanned taxis, and outside the United States it is implementing autopilot technologies on a residual basis. Perhaps keeping this limitation in mind, Elon Musk did not directly answer the question about the need to coordinate the release of robotaxis without controls with NHTSA. “Our solution will be universal, able to work anywhere. It could even work on another Earth,” the head of Tesla said mysteriously.
In fact, only one company has now been approved to operate vehicles without steering wheels or pedals in the United States—Nuro, a startup whose automated delivery vehicles operate in small numbers in California and Texas. Amazon subsidiary Zoox has declared its autonomous shuttles to be “self-certifying,” opening itself up to an NHTSA investigation. The GM Cruise subsidiary managed to start testing Origin unmanned shuttles, but the need for their certification disappeared this week, since the company chose to abandon the initiative for their mass production for economic reasons. Waymo prefers to test and operate prototypes in the United States based on production electric vehicles and hybrids that are equipped with traditional controls. She does not yet have clear plans to produce a car without a steering wheel and pedals.