Tesla has begun putting production Cybercabs — the two-seat robotaxi with no steering wheel, brake pedal or mirrors — onto public roads, and US regulators opened a federal safety probe within hours of the rollout.

On the evening of September 3, Tesla welcomed hundreds of guests to downtown Austin, Texas, for rides in the driverless vehicles, which it is deploying on its Robotaxi ride-hailing network. ABC News and Reuters report that roughly 1,000 Cybercabs are being deployed in Austin; a Texas state database listed 45 of the vehicles in the state's Tesla fleet at the time of writing. The network already operates in a handful of cities in Texas and Florida.

The following morning, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an investigation called an Audit Query into whether the Cybercab complies with federal motor-vehicle safety standards. According to a government filing, the probe will examine the data and process Tesla used to certify that a car without conventional manual controls meets rules that still assume a human driver.

The dispute is about process as much as hardware. NHTSA has told companies building unusually shaped driverless vehicles to seek an exemption from federal rules before carrying passengers; Amazon-owned Zoox, whose vehicles also lack steering wheels, won the first such exemption this summer, capped at 2,500 vehicles for the year. Tesla has argued it needs no exemption because its vehicles already comply with existing standards. The agency is simultaneously rewriting eight rules — including requirements for brake pedals, windshield wipers and rearview mirrors — to accommodate driverless designs.

Ann Carlson, a former acting NHTSA administrator now at UCLA, said the audit suggests the agency is 'super frustrated' with Tesla: 'For Tesla to slap them in the face and ignore that — that is gobsmacking.' NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said the agency 'fully supports the safe development and deployment of automated vehicles,' but that 'as the federal regulator, we need to ensure that all of our laws are followed.'

An Audit Query is an early, information-gathering step rather than a finding of wrongdoing — but such investigations can escalate into recalls, civil penalties or court enforcement. The stakes are high for Tesla: CEO Elon Musk has said the company should be seen not as an automaker but as a robotics and autonomous-vehicle business, and has spoken of producing millions of Cybercabs annually. The Austin launch and the federal response make the Cybercab the highest-profile test yet of whether self-certification — the US system in which automakers vouch for their own safety compliance — can accommodate cars with no driver at all.

Sources