A driverless Cruise car sits in traffic on Austin Street in downtown Houston on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo: Jay R. Jordan/Axios
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team plans to create a federal framework for fully self-driving vehicles, Bloomberg reported citing sources.
Should new regulations permit vehicles without human controls, it could provide a significant benefit to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and a major donor to President-elect Trump, who has emerged as a key figure in his inner circle.
Current federal rules pose challenges for deploying vehicles without human controls, which Tesla aims to address.
The Trump team is seeking policy leaders to develop regulations for self-driving vehicles, the report said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) can issue rules to facilitate autonomous vehicle operations, but Congress must pass legislation for mass adoption of self-driving cars.
A bipartisan legislative measure is in early discussions to create federal rules around autonomous vehicles, people familiar with the development told Bloomberg.
[…]
Efforts to legislate autonomous vehicle regulations is a challenge. The NHTSA currently allows the deployment of 2,500 self-driving vehicles per year under an exemption. Legislative attempts to increase this number to 100,000 have repeatedly failed.
A bill passed the House during Trump’s first term but stalled in the Senate. An attempt to merge it with other legislation during the Biden administration also faltered.
The Bloomberg News story this is based on is here but it’s subscriber only. It was in the business section of the Chron’s print edition recently, which is what made me look for it.
As with all things Trump and Musk, there are complicating factors.
The Trump team has not commented on its plans. But on the campaign trail, Trump said self-driving cars are a “little concerning to me,” and pledged to “stop [autonomous cars] from operating on American roads.” His comments were a little disjointed, however, and may have been referencing self-driving cars from China rather than US-made autonomous vehicles.
Has Elon Musk, now a key advisor to the president-elect, eased Trump’s concerns? Musk has bet Tesla’s future on the company’s ability to “solve self-driving.” In October, he debuted two robotaxi prototypes and reiterated during a recent earnings call that “the future is autonomous.”
“It should be blindingly obvious” that that’s the direction Tesla is taking, Musk added.
However, Tesla has not yet gained legal clearance to operate its robotaxis in the US, falling behind Waymo and others that are testing in several states. At the Cybercab launch, Musk suggested Tesla could get clearance to operate driverless systems in California and Texas in 2025 and start production in 2026 or 2027.
Individual states have their own testing and safety standards for self-driving cars, which is why we often hear of self-driving car software operating in specific cities and states (usually California, Nevada, and Texas). If testing goes well, they move to the next state, and so on.
On the federal level, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) sets the rules for testing and safety. In 2021, it issued a Standing General Order that requires companies with Level 2 self-driving systems and above to report crashes to the agency. It is currently investigating four crashes involving self-driving Teslas and whether system design was a factor.
“Vehicle safety promises to be one of automation’s biggest benefits,” the NHTSA says. “While these systems are not available to consumers today, the advantages of this developing technology could be far-reaching.”
Most of what comes out of Trump’s mouth is nonsense and garbage, little of which he likely remembers he said, so don’t read too much into any random burblings he made on the trail. Also, never believe any claim by Elon Musk about when he’ll deliver a fully functional autonomous vehicle. Beyond that, it is safe to assume that as long as Musk hasn’t completely worn out his welcome, he will do anything and everything he can to benefit himself and his businesses, so assume that any actions taken by NHTSA or the Department of Transportation in the direction of more autonomous vehicles were at least noted by him. Texas as noted is already pretty open to these things, so in the short term at least there may not be that much effect here.
Anyway, see here, here, and here for a bit of background. I will note that driverless trucks are out there as well, and we mustn’t forget about flying taxis, some of which are also intended to be autonomous, as well. And on and on. Like it or not, ready or not, we’re probably going to be much farther down this road in four years’ time than we are right now.