That was quick. Tesla just introduced its first new model since 2023 yesterday and today the government announced an investigation into the car's compliance with safety standards.
If you missed all of this, yesterday Tesla held a rollout event in Austin. Unlike some previous Tesla events, this one was private but afterward they had a bunch of Cybercabs giving rides to attendees. Tesla put out this little video that explains how it works. It's just like booking an Uber, minus the driver of course.
Tesla has been pushing the Robotaxi idea for several years now. It already has some Model Y Robotaxis operating in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. Most of these appear to be stock Model Y cars running the company's Full-Self Driving (or some version of it). Some of the cars still have safety monitors in the driver's seat to meet legal requirements.
However, some of the Model Y cars and all of the new Cybercabs have no driver. In fact, the Cybercab has no steering wheel and no pedals. It's a two seater in which both seats are for passengers. And there are other changes. For instance, the car has no mirrors because there is no human driver. It also has no sound for the turn signal because the signal can't be operated by a human.
But with new innovations come new problems. Today, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it was opening an investigation into whether or not the Cybercab is in compliance with safety standards.
Tesla launched the Cybercab, a two-seater gold coupe without pedals or mirrors, saying Thursday that customers in Austin, Texas can book rides through its Robotaxi ride-hailing app.
The vehicle’s novel design potentially puts it in conflict with federal safety standards, which were developed for traditional motor vehicles by and large several decades ago. Tesla told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the Cybercab meets “all applicable” standards, the regulator said in a filing made public Friday.
But the regulator wants to examine the process and technical data that Tesla relied upon to make the compliance claim, according to the filing. NHTSA said it would conduct an audit and consider the extent to which Tesla’s certification depended on determinations that certain standards are inapplicable to the Cybercab...
If NHTSA determines the Cybercab isn’t compliant with federal safety standards, the agency could order a recall to address any issues, after a series of procedural steps. Refusing such an order could expose Tesla to major fines.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of problem Tesla seems to run into pretty often. I'm sure the NHTSA safety regulations mandate that every car on the road has side mirrors. The Cybercab doesn't have those because there's no human driver and no way for a human to drive even if they wanted to. So this is a situation where common sense says one thing and the written regs probably say something else. Whether or not NHTSA decides it can adapt the regs to a changing reality is anyone's guess.
This reminds me of a story Elon Musk once told about Space X. When he started launching Starship, a government agency required him to calculate the chances that a falling ship might hit a shark. This whole clip is worth watching. Don't miss the end where Elon talks about seals with headphones.
If you ever wondered why Musk is such a skeptic of the government in general, it may be because he's living through scenes from an Ayn Rand novel as revised by members of Monty Python. All you can do is laugh.
The good news is that Musk has these problems so often because his companies are frequently doing things that no one anticipated, like launching the largest rocket ever built. Similarly, a car without mirrors is only an issue because no one was thinking about a car without a driver or a steering wheel when the regs were written. But now those cars are on the streets and the bureaucracy needs to catch up.
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