The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit into whether Tesla properly certified its driverless Cybercab as compliant with federal safety rules, launching the inquiry the same week the vehicle began carrying paying passengers in Austin, Texas. The audit query, numbered AQ26002, examines the self-certification Tesla filed for a vehicle that has no steering wheel, brake pedal, accelerator pedal, or mirrors, controls federal standards have historically required unless a manufacturer secures a specific exemption. NHTSA opened the inquiry on September 3, the same day Tesla’s paid rides began, and announced it publicly the next day.
The self-certification NHTSA is questioning
Federal law lets automakers certify their own vehicles as meeting Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards rather than seeking government pre-approval, a system NHTSA is now testing against the Cybercab specifically. The agency’s press release says the audit query will examine “the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab,” focusing on whether Tesla was right to treat certain standard requirements as inapplicable to a vehicle built with no human driving position at all.
NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation opened the formal record the same week, according to the audit query filing, which frames the inquiry around Tesla’s basis for determining that a vehicle lacking permanently attached manual controls could still satisfy standards written when every production car had a steering wheel and pedals as a baseline assumption. NHTSA describes the query as a way to assess the technical data and process Tesla relied on, not a finding that the certification was wrong.
Missing controls at the center of the review
Two specific standards anchor the audit, according to reporting on the inquiry: Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 135, which requires a foot-operated service brake pedal, and No. 111, which requires an inside rearview mirror and a driver-side outside mirror on passenger cars. The Cybercab has none of those. Tesla’s self-certification treated both requirements as not applicable to a vehicle with no human driving position, the interpretation NHTSA’s audit is meant to test rather than simply accept. Both standards were written decades before a driverless taxi service was a realistic possibility, and neither one contains an explicit carve-out for a vehicle that removes manual controls entirely rather than merely offering an automated mode alongside them.
NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison framed the review as compatible with, not opposed to, driverless technology. “NHTSA fully supports the safe development and deployment of automated vehicles,” Morrison said in the agency’s press release. “But as the federal regulator, [NHTSA needs] to ensure that all of [its] laws are followed. [Its] approach of balancing innovation with safety oversight will allow the United States to maintain its global leadership in AV innovation.”
Roughly 1,000 vehicles, a handful on the road so far
NHTSA’s inquiry covers a population of approximately 1,000 Cybercabs, according to reporting on the audit, though that figure describes the scope of vehicles the certification question could eventually touch rather than an active fleet already on the road. Far fewer were actually running in Austin when the inquiry opened: roughly 45 Cybercabs were registered in Texas the morning after NHTSA’s announcement, well short of the population the audit is built to cover.
The gap between those two numbers reflects how early Tesla’s Cybercab rollout still is. Commercial rides began September 3 in a geofenced part of Austin limited mostly to shareholders and invited riders, and Tesla has said it plans to widen the service area and vehicle count gradually. Detailed coverage of the audit notes that NHTSA’s roughly 1,000-vehicle estimate anticipates that expansion rather than describing Cybercabs already carrying passengers on the day the inquiry opened.
The Cybercab audit is not Tesla’s only open matter with NHTSA. The agency has a separate, ongoing investigation into Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system covering roughly 3.2 million vehicles over visibility-related crashes, a review that predates the Cybercab’s Austin launch and touches the same underlying driving software the Cybercab relies on. Coverage of the certification audit frames the two reviews together as a broader pattern of federal scrutiny rather than one isolated dispute.
A pending rule and a wider Tesla pattern
The audit lands alongside a separate rulemaking that could eventually resolve the underlying question it raises. NHTSA proposed in a June 26 filing to exempt vehicles with no manual controls from the foot-brake-pedal requirement in Standard No. 135, arguing a pedal is unnecessary when an automated driving system operates the vehicle and could itself pose a risk if a passenger tried to use it. The comment period on that proposal, originally set to close July 27, was later extended into September.
Until that rulemaking is finished, the standards Tesla treated as inapplicable remain on the books exactly as written. NHTSA has not set a public deadline for concluding the audit.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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