The United States\u2019 top automotive safety regulator has opened an investigation into Tesla\u2019s decision to launch its new Cybercab on public roads with no steering wheel or pedals.<\/p>\n
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced Friday morning that it opened the probe mere hours after Tesla put the first Cybercabs on the streets of Austin, Texas. Federal vehicle safety regulations require manual controls like brake pedals, though the Department of Transportation recently proposed removing those requirements for vehicles that are designed to be autonomously driven.<\/p>\n
\u201cNHTSA fully supports the safe development and deployment of automated vehicles. But as the federal regulator, we need to ensure that all of our laws are followed,\u201d administrator Jonathan Morrison said in a statement. \u201cOur approach of balancing innovation with safety oversight will allow the United States to maintain its global leadership in AV innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n
NHTSA said Friday that Tesla told the agency it self-certified the Cybercab as being compliant with all of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). Automakers traditionally self-certify whether their vehicles comply with FMVSS rules.<\/p>\n
In the filing, the agency said it was opening the investigation to \u201cexamine the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab and related issues.\u201d NHTSA said it will consider the extent to which the company\u2019s certification depended on determinations that certain federal motor standards are inapplicable to the Cybercab. \u00a0<\/p>\n
There is precedent to NHTSA\u2019s inquiry. In 2022, Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company Zoox self-certified its cube-like robotaxi, which lacks traditional controls such as a steering wheel and pedals. NHTSA then opened up what it called a \u201cspecial order\u201d seeking more information from Zoox and formally launched an audit query \u2014 the same process it is now using for Tesla \u2014 the following the year.<\/p>\n
While Zoox was still heavily in its testing phase at that time, the investigation did slow its path to commercialization. Zoox had long maintained that the self-certification process was sufficient and in 2025 the federal agency gave the company an exemption to demonstrate \u2014 not commercially operate \u2014 its technology. Zoox then went through the official process and filed for a temporary Part 555 exemption from eight Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards in hopes it would get the final OK that would allow it to charge for robotaxi rides.<\/p>\n
Zoox received final approval for that exemption in July 2026, eliminating one of the last remaining regulatory hurdles the company needed to clear before launching a commercial robotaxi service. The exemption did place some limits on Zoox. Under the temporary exemption, Zoox can add 2,500 vehicles per year to its commercial fleet over the next for two years. Zoox opened its commercial service several weeks later and now charges for rides in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Whether Tesla will face a similarly long process is unclear. Zoox navigated the regulatory process under the Biden and Trump administrations. <\/p>\n
On Friday, NHTSA acknowledged that it is in the process of changing some parts of the FMVSS that relate to manual controls in order to \u201cunleash American innovation and enhance safety on our roads.\u201d The agency said it \u201clooks forward to finishing these critical updates and removing unnecessary barriers to American AV innovation in the coming months. Until that work is completed, however, existing standards remain in force.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story has been updated with new information from NHTSA.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/09\/04\/feds-launch-investigation-into-teslas-cybercab-deployment\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/tesla-cybercab-street-getty.jpg?resize=1200,800″] The United States\u2019 top automotive safety regulator has opened an investigation into Tesla\u2019s decision to launch its new Cybercab on public roads with no steering wheel or pedals. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced Friday morning that it opened the probe mere hours after Tesla put the first Cybercabs on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,62],"class_list":["post-2128660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-techcrunch-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2128660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2128660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2128660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2128660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}