According to reports, members of the transition team for President-elect Trump are planning to make building a framework for fully self-driving vehicles a priority within the DOT.
Rules currently in place make it tough for companies seeking to unleash vehicles without steering wheels or traditional control pedals in any meaningful quantity. A so-called granted exemption exists which permits a brand to deploy about 2,500 of the things but anything beyond that isn’t presently kosher. It seems that may soon change.
A company that would stand to greatly benefit from such a shift in policy is, of course, Tesla. Earlier this year, it unveiled prototypes of its Cybercab, a machine billed by Elon Musk as a pillar of his desire to push Tesla into artificial intelligence and robotics. He told investors the company seeks to make the vehicle in a “very high volume,” meaning any change to legislation for robotaxis could help that goal immensely. Cautioning his own propensity to be overly ambitious with timelines, a date of 2026 was floated for production.
It needs to be said that Musk now finds himself as part of Trump’s inner circle, named to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (whose acronym is DOGE, because memes) initiative to “dismantle government bureaucracy” and cut spending while ditching regulations deemed overly burdensome. That last missive could be very useful in permitting large numbers of the Tesla Cybercab to hit the streets.
In fairness, it isn’t just Tesla – and its CEO who has the ear of the President-elect – who has been jonesing for changes to robotaxi laws. General Motors long lobbied for similar alterations to legislation, petitioning the NHTSA a couple of years ago for exemptions so it could field a shuttle sans human-centric driver control through its Cruise arm. It ultimately threw in the towel earlier this year following over 24 months of inaction by the agency. Now it looks like they may have given up too soon.
[Images: Tesla]
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