Elon Musk Doesn’t Answer Your Top Questions About Tesla’s Robotic Taxi

Will Tesla’s robotaxi have a steering wheel? Elon Musk won’t say.

Tesla’s CEO dodged several questions during an earnings call Tuesday about the status of the company’s long-promised self-driving car, including whether it would have traditional controls like pedals and steering wheels.

It’s an increasingly important question that has been hovering over Tesla’s robotaxi plans, which have already been delayed to allow more work on the prototype. In theory, a car without a steering wheel or pedals could take months, if not years, to be approved for public roads. Meanwhile, a more conventional-looking vehicle could be released much sooner.

That’s because Tesla would need federal approval to deploy a more radically designed robotaxi, something it acknowledged in its letter to shareholders.

“While the timing of Robotaxi’s deployment depends on technological advancement and regulatory approval, we are aggressively pursuing this opportunity given the huge potential value,” the company said.

However, when asked specifically about what regulatory approval Tesla would seek, Musk declined to answer.

Specifically, he was asked whether Tesla would seek an exemption from the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards to deploy a vehicle without traditional controls. His response was to compare Tesla’s “generalized solution” to Waymo’s “localized” solution, which he described as “very fragile.”

“Our solution is a general solution that can work anywhere,” he added. “It will even work on different terrain.”

Currently, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) require cars to have basic human controls, such as steering wheels, pedals, side mirrors, and so on. These standards dictate how vehicles must be designed before they are sold in the United States. If a proposed new vehicle does not comply with all of the current FMVSS standards, manufacturers can apply for an exemption. But the government only offers 2,500 exemptions per company per year.

In theory, the cap on exemptions would prevent any self-driving vehicle company — including Tesla — from deploying purpose-built self-driving vehicles en masse. Self-driving advocates have tried to pass legislation to lift the cap to allow more self-driving vehicles on public roads, but the bill has stalled in Congress over questions about liability and the readiness of the technology.

So far, only one company has received an FMVSS exemption: Nuro, which is using it to deploy a small number of driverless delivery robots in Texas and California. GM-owned Cruise applied for an FMVSS exemption for its Origin shuttle, which has no steering wheel or pedals — but that was never approved, and now Origin is on indefinite hold. Amazon.com Inc.’s Zoox said its autonomous shuttle was “self-certified,” prompting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to open an investigation into what that means.

Other companies have opted to skip the step altogether. All of Waymo’s driverless vehicles have traditional controls, though they operate on public roads without safety drivers. The company has said it will eventually introduce a steering-less vehicle, but it has not yet said when or whether it will seek an FMVSS exemption.

All of this means that Tesla faces similar regulatory hurdles, depending on whether or not it decides to ditch traditional controls. Hints have been dropped along the way, such as design sketches showing the car as a steering-wheel-free zone.

Critics have dismissed the Tesla robota as having steamroller software, noting that Waymo makes nearly 50,000 passenger rides each week, while Musk continues to make vague promises about a vehicle that has never been seen and may never exist.

Musk is certainly betting the company on that, and has repeatedly emphasized that Tesla is fundamentally an AI company, not a traditional car company. However, he has been unwilling to be transparent about the real obstacles the company is likely to face in its quest to turn that vision into reality.

We’ll have to wait until October for a real answer, or maybe even later, waiting for more delays.