NHTSA Opens Safety Audit Of Tesla’s Cybercab Robotaxi Hours After Austin Launch Event

AUSTIN, Texas — Federal safety regulators opened an audit of roughly 1,000 Tesla Cybercab vehicles just hours after the electric automaker launched paid robotaxi rides in the two-seat, driverless vehicle in downtown Austin, setting up a potential regulatory showdown over whether the car can legally operate without a steering wheel, pedals or mirrors.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it opened the audit to assess how Tesla determined the Cybercab complies with federal vehicle-safety regulations, which were written decades ago for human-driven vehicles and generally require manual controls such as steering wheels and pedals.

The audit came just hours after Tesla held a launch event in downtown Austin marking the Cybercab’s rollout, an event that drew a large crowd of fans and social media influencers as the golden, butterfly-door vehicle was formally added to Tesla’s existing robotaxi fleet, which has previously operated using modified versions of the company’s best-selling Model Y SUV. Tesla said Cybercab rides were open to the public and executives outlined pricing plans for the service during the event.

Unlike most other countries, where new vehicle models and technologies typically require regulatory clearance before launch, U.S. automakers are permitted to deploy new vehicles on public roads by self-certifying that they meet federal safety standards, without needing prior government approval. That regulatory structure has fueled speculation over how Tesla intends to justify the Cybercab’s compliance with rules that were not designed with driverless vehicles in mind.

Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a consumer advocacy group, expressed sharp skepticism that the Cybercab could be considered compliant with existing federal standards under any reasonable reading of the regulations.

“I don’t think there is a reasonable interpretation that can be made to suggest that the Cybercab can comply with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards,” Brooks said.

NHTSA has been working to update its vehicle-safety standards at an accelerated pace compared with its historical timeline, and is separately drafting new rules specifically intended to accommodate driverless vehicles. Even so, experts have said those regulatory changes are likely to take considerably longer to formally take effect than the timeline Tesla CEO Elon Musk has publicly promised for the Cybercab’s expansion.

Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor and autonomous-vehicle safety expert, said Musk’s history suggests he is unlikely to wait for regulatory clarity before pushing forward with the Cybercab’s rollout.

“Tesla historically has tested limits and pushed boundaries on regulations,” Koopman said. “I fully expect Tesla to test the limits.”

Koopman suggested Tesla could attempt to advance a “creative interpretation” of existing vehicle regulations, asserting that Cybercabs comply with federal standards while moving quickly to expand deployment before regulators are able to formally respond.

“That could take NHTSA or state regulators years to resolve,” Koopman said. “Meanwhile, Tesla could be operating on public roads.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the audit.

Tesla began manufacturing the Cybercab in April, with Musk previously promising that production would grow “exponentially” later this year or in 2027. At the vehicle’s original 2024 unveiling, Musk said the company intended to eventually sell the Cybercab for less than $30,000. Since then, Tesla has already launched a more limited, paid robotaxi service in Texas and Florida using modified Model Y vehicles, which retain the manual controls required under current federal safety standards, along with human backup drivers present in some vehicles.

The reliability of Tesla’s underlying self-driving technology has also drawn scrutiny from independent experts. Tesla has said its Full Self-Driving software, a version of which powers the Cybercab, is up to 10 times safer than human drivers, and has noted that its existing Austin robotaxi service has operated without a fatal accident to date. However, interviews conducted by Reuters with multiple former Tesla employees who worked on training the company’s self-driving software found that the system continued to struggle with certain basic driving maneuvers even as the company moved toward wider commercial deployment.

Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who focuses on autonomous-driving regulation, offered a blunt assessment of Tesla’s readiness to deploy a vehicle without conventional manual controls.

“No public information about Tesla’s capabilities suggests that Tesla is anywhere close to being able to safely and reliably deploy an automated driving system over the wide range of conditions that would be required for a vehicle without conventional controls,” Smith said.

For vehicles that do not comply with existing federal safety standards, NHTSA offers a formal exemption process that automakers can apply for, though that pathway caps annual deployment at 2,500 vehicles. Tesla engineering chief Lars Moravy said earlier this year on X that the Cybercab would not be subject to that cap, though he did not offer further detail explaining how the company intended to avoid it. NHTSA has previously said Tesla had not applied for the standard exemption process, fueling speculation that the company has instead opted to self-certify the Cybercab’s compliance independently, an approach Koopman had separately suggested Tesla might pursue.

Recent precedent for that kind of self-certification approach has not been favorable. Amazon’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary Zoox, which has been rolling out its own unconventional vehicle featuring two bench seats facing each other and no manual driving controls, previously attempted to self-certify its own vehicle’s compliance with federal standards. NHTSA subsequently launched an investigation into that certification, which ultimately concluded with Zoox withdrawing its compliance claim altogether. Roughly a year later, Zoox received a formal federal exemption allowing limited commercial deployment, which took effect in July.

Three former senior NHTSA officials told Reuters ahead of Thursday’s Cybercab launch event that any dispute between the agency and Tesla over the company’s self-certification approach could ultimately end up being resolved in court.

“It does happen from time to time and NHTSA, importantly, has not always won these cases,” one of the former officials said.

The Cybercab represents a central pillar of Musk’s broader strategy of positioning Tesla’s future value around self-driving software and robotics rather than traditional vehicle sales alone, a bet that has helped push the company’s stock market valuation to approximately $1.4 trillion, a figure that now exceeds the combined valuation of several of the world’s top traditional automakers. With NHTSA’s audit now underway just as the Cybercab begins carrying paying passengers in Austin, the coming weeks are likely to offer an early indication of how aggressively federal regulators intend to scrutinize Tesla’s rollout of a vehicle that departs so significantly from the conventional, human-operated design standards that have long governed vehicles permitted on U.S. public roads.