Tesla has asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to treat its entire sworn response about the Cybercab as confidential business information. The filing arrived on Oct. 30 and answers a special order containing 21 questions about how a car with no steering wheel or pedals was certified for American roads. A one-page cover letter declares the whole file confidential.
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The fight over secrecy sits on top of a certification dispute that began in early September. NHTSA opened Audit Query AQ26002 on Sept. 3, 2026, the same day Tesla staged its Cybercab launch event in Austin, and the agency’s Chief Counsel signed the special order a week later. Paid rides in Austin started within a day, so the questions were put to Tesla while the car was already carrying passengers.
The 21 requests and the officer’s affidavit
The special order itself is signed by Peter Simshauser, NHTSA’s Chief Counsel, and addressed to Brian Jazaeri and Eric Williams in Tesla’s legal department. It demands an affidavit from a responsible Tesla officer attesting to a diligent search and to complete, correct answers. Noncompliance can be referred to the Justice Department, with civil penalties of up to $27,874 per day, capped at $139,356,994 for a related series of violations. Falsifying or withholding information can carry criminal penalties of up to 15 years in prison.
The requests run from scale to engineering detail. Early items ask for each vehicle’s automation level, certification label, vehicle count, operating areas and plans for expansion. Requests 5 through 7 ask whether a human could drive the car with temporarily attached controls, whether those controls formed part of the certification basis, and how removing them squares with the federal make-inoperative rule. Request 8 asks how Tesla determined compliance with each listed standard, including test methods, and later items name mirrors, turn signals, telltales, shift display and stability control.
FMVSS 135 and the foot-operated service brake
Request 19 is the one that frames the dispute. It asks how Tesla determined compliance with FMVSS 135, which requires that the service brakes be activated by a foot control.
NHTSA has said publicly that a vehicle without a foot-activated brake cannot be certified under FMVSS No. 135, a position Motor1 reported on Sept. 16 from Reuters. Pending agency proposals would allow an actuator to serve as the service brake control, but the current rule still reads foot control. Request 21 then asks how the vehicles comply without a Part 555 exemption, the route Amazon’s Zoox took when it received a limited exemption in July, capped at 2,500 vehicles a year. Tesla chose to self-certify instead, and the order wants that choice explained under oath.
Part 512, the Chief Counsel and a docket with blank pages
Tesla did not hurry. On Sept. 18 it asked for eight more weeks, until Nov. 20, citing the voluminous nature of the request, according to Electrek’s Nov. 5 report. NHTSA granted 30 days, moving the deadline from Sept. 30 to Oct. 30, and Tesla answered on that date. The original order had told companies seeking secrecy to file through the agency’s confidential business information portal under 49 CFR Part 512, with a supporting letter and certificate.
Only three Tesla documents appear in public docket AQ26002, and two are empty. The placeholder for Request 8 is blank, with a note that the confidentiality request covers the entirety of each document. The one substantive file is the Cybercab First Responder Interaction Plan, version 1.2, dated Sept. 3, which Tesla had already put online for police and fire crews. It says the Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or pedals, and that a version with those controls is typically an engineering or test vehicle. It says nothing about brakes, mirrors or certification. What it does describe is an operating domain covering all public roadways, from freeways to rural roads, and a procedure under which first responders can be granted touchscreen access to move the car after showing a badge to a camera in the B-pillar. Request 20 of the order asks Tesla about that same touchscreen, specifically whether it gives occupants controls to move the vehicle and what limits apply.
Under Part 512 the Chief Counsel decides whether a confidentiality claim holds and can order a public version released. NHTSA has not commented on Tesla’s request and has not found the Cybercab noncompliant with any standard. Tesla made a similar request in June 2025 for its answers on the original Austin Robotaxi launch, as Electrek covered at the time, and those answers never became public. Electrek’s Fred Lambert calls the certification argument the most interesting document in the autonomous vehicle industry, and commenters on his report doubt that answers about brakes and mirrors can qualify as trade secrets.
The open question is narrow and dated. Electrek’s earlier Sept. 15 account of the order put the affected fleet near 1,000 vehicles, and the Chief Counsel has not said when a ruling on the blanket claim will come.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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