Is Elon Musk Going to Get Federal Policy & Approval of Robotaxis Implemented?
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And what would that mean?
On the most recent Tesla quarterly conference call, Elon Musk brought up the possibility of creating US policy on self-driving cars. “There should be a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” This would theoretically be through the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) issued by the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), Musk stated.
David Lau, VP of Software Engineering at Tesla, said that regulators started looking into this in 2017 and 2018, but the topic has stalled since then. He then said, “But we would appreciate, and support, helping out with those regulations.” Then, Musk added, “If there’s a Department of Government Efficiency, I’ll try to make that happen.” (That’s not exactly what I expected the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would be about, but, hey, if it’s something to help Tesla, I guess that qualifies.)
With Trump now elected president, this is one topic that came back into my head (of course, on top of all this stuff). Presumably, given that this is the #1, #2, and #3 topic for Elon Musk at Tesla, I have to think this would be a priority for Musk in the coming year. If he can get a federal system in place and get federal approval of full self driving (like, real full self driving) for Tesla vehicles, that would presumably cut out the need to get state-by-state approval — which I assume would become a tedious, time-consuming process. (And, for the record, I was at a conference in 2015 where a Florida Department of Transportation official discussed getting such standards at the federal level eventually.)
Now, would approval at the federal level preclude some states from having stronger standards? I don’t think so. I imagine states, like California perhaps, could have stricter standards than the federal government. But we’ll see what happens if we get there.
I assume that with FMVSS for autonomous vehicles, Musk would want a safety driver required up to some level of no-intervention driving. Then, if the car could get up to some very high tier of self-driving without intervention, the vehicle would be allowed to be used without a safety driver, and then also at a later stage could collect fares from paying passengers. Can he get something like this implemented under Trump in the next couples of years? I’m not sure. Perhaps there are other critical elements to include.
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