Federal safety regulators have opened a formal review of Tesla’s new steering-wheel-free taxis just one day after the vehicles began carrying passengers in Austin, Texas. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it will audit the self-certification process Tesla used to clear the two-seat Cybercabs for public roads, a move that wiped out the stock’s launch-day rally and sent shares down nearly six percent to $354.08 on Friday.
The certification gap
Tesla had told regulators it satisfied federal standards through the same self-certification route automakers routinely use for new models. The Cybercab, however, is not a routine model. It lacks steering wheels, mirrors and brake pedals, the basic hardware federal rules still assume a vehicle will carry. NHTSA’s filing makes clear the agency is not treating this as a standard check; it is examining whether the certification itself was valid, and whether the technical data Tesla submitted actually supports compliance.
Precedent and leverage
This is not the first time a steering-wheel-free cab has drawn scrutiny. Zoox, the Amazon-owned robotaxi startup, went through a similar probe three years ago after self-certifying its own vehicles. Regulators eventually signed off, but only after a full formal review. Tesla’s leverage here is thinner than it appears: the company is already the subject of three separate federal investigations into its self-driving software, covering fatal crashes in low visibility, red-light violations and wrong-side driving, and a pattern of late crash reporting.
The rollout that isn’t
Musk framed Thursday’s event as the start of a national network of cheap, driverless taxis. In practice, the Austin fleet joins a robotaxi service that has been running conventional Teslas in the city for more than a year, plus operations in five other Texas and Florida cities. The Cybercab’s distinction, no manual controls for a passenger to grab in an emergency, is the very feature regulators are now testing. Until the audit concludes, the national rollout exists only in the launch script.