Semi Rollout nitter.net/i/broadcasts/1vJpPNaYn…

NHTSA seems to still be living in the past as it has opened an audit of roughly 1,000 Tesla Cybercabs to examine the processes and technical data Tesla used to claim compliance with federal vehicle safety standards. According to NHTSA, the Cybercab lacks permanently attached, conventional manual controls—including a steering wheel, brake and accelerator pedals, and mirrors. The agency stated it will review the basis for Tesla's safety certification and related issues, specifically looking into how the company determined that certain Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards did not apply to the vehicle. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In our last post, we explained why Tesla is deploying the Cybercab without a special government exemption, relying instead on self-certifying that the vehicle meets all applicable federal safety rules. That strategy immediately triggers the billion-dollar question: WHAT HAPPENS IF NHTSA DECIDES TESLA’S INTERPRETATION IS DEAD WRONG? 🚨 That possibility is why NHTSA’s fresh Cybercab audit matters so much, and opening the federal rulebook reveals one specific regulation as Tesla’s biggest near-term obstacle. 1⃣ FMVSS 135 could be Tesla’s biggest near-term vulnerability The Cybercab has no brake pedal, yet FMVSS 135—the federal safety standard governing light-vehicle braking—explicitly mandates that service brakes be activated through a foot control. While common sense suggests a foot pedal is pointless in a car built without a driver, NHTSA addressed this exact reasoning back in 2020. Regulators drew a firm line between outdated testing procedures and binding equipment mandates, concluding that an automaker cannot self-certify around an explicit foot-pedal requirement without a formal exemption. By bypassing an exemption and self-certifying anyway, Tesla is betting its vehicle configuration renders that requirement inapplicable. If NHTSA adheres to its 2020 precedent, Tesla faces a steep uphill battle, with existing regulatory records pointing to roughly an 80% to 90% chance Tesla loses on this specific issue. While this remains an assessment of regulatory precedent rather than a formal finding against Tesla, it establishes the direct bridge between FMVSS 135 and Part 555. FMVSS 135 creates the potential violation, while Part 555 offers the legal mechanism to deploy noncompliant vehicles. The path forward splits neatly: ➡️ If Tesla wins the FMVSS 135 argument, self-certification stands and no exemption is required. ➡️ If Tesla loses, the pedal-less design becomes noncompliant, forcing Tesla to modify the vehicle, mount a legal challenge, or pursue a Part 555 exemption to keep cars on the road. 2⃣ That is when the 2,500-vehicle cap gets real As long as Tesla’s self-certification holds, the Cybercab avoids the statutory volume limits tied to federal exemptions. Once forced into Part 555, however, the commercial exemption pathway generally caps deployment at 2,500 vehicles in any 12-month period. While 2,500 vehicles works well for an initial pilot, it severely bottlenecks Tesla’s long-term robotaxi vision. Tesla is engineering the Cybercab and its unboxed manufacturing system for mass production, meaning federal caps—not factory capacity—would become the immediate constraint. This risk is far from theoretical. Zoox originally attempted to self-certify its purpose-built robotaxi without pedals or a steering wheel, but a subsequent NHTSA audit flagged noncompliances and ultimately pushed Zoox onto an exemption track capped at 2,500 vehicles per year. That precedent proves regulators are fully prepared to steer custom robotaxis into the exemption bucket. 3⃣ Why a 2,500-vehicle ceiling is probably not a permanent dead end That statutory cap is unlikely to remain a permanent barrier because NHTSA is already rewriting the exact rule causing the problem. On June 26, the agency proposed modernizing FMVSS 135 for vehicles operated exclusively by an Automated Driving System (ADS), eliminating the foot-pedal mandate and allowing onboard computers to activate brakes directly. Crucially, NHTSA is not lowering safety standards. The vehicle must still meet identical stopping-distance and braking-performance benchmarks, removing the physical human interface without compromising performance. In fact, NHTSA noted that physical pedals in a driverless vehicle offer zero safety benefit and could even let passengers inadvertently or intentionally interfere with automated driving. Because regulators initiated this reform themselves, the question is no longer whether the rule should modernize, but when the rulemaking will be finalized after public comments closed on August 26. 4⃣ A regulatory race between two NHTSA clocks Because that rulemaking is running alongside the audit, it creates an internal race between two arms of the same agency. NHTSA investigators are auditing Tesla’s current self-certification, while NHTSA rulemakers are finalizing the update that makes the pedal mandate obsolete. Whichever clock runs out first dictates how disruptive this becomes. An adverse audit determination before the rule is finalized could trigger temporary bottlenecks, emergency exemption filings, or rollout delays. Conversely, if rulemakers finalize the updated standard first, the brake-pedal hurdle evaporates before mass manufacturing begins. To Tesla’s advantage, NHTSA proposed that the revised rule take effect immediately upon publication, bypassing the typical multi-year phase-in. Based on the regulatory docket, the realistic timeline shapes up as follows: ♦️ ~25% to 35% chance the final rule lands by the end of October 2026 ♦️ ~60% to 75% chance it is finalized before the end of 2026 ♦️ ~80% to 90% chance it is officially on the books by the end of Q1 2027 The odds that NHTSA ultimately adopts this reform as proposed remain exceptionally high—around 85% to 95%. The core uncertainty is not whether the rule will change, but whether it changes fast enough. 5⃣ The brake pedal might only be the start of the audit Even a swift modernization of the braking standard does not guarantee clear skies, because the Cybercab also eliminates the steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and traditional side-view mirrors. NHTSA confirmed that its audit is reviewing Tesla’s broader legal rationale for determining which legacy standards apply to the Cybercab. While the agency is pursuing parallel modernization efforts for mirrors, lighting controls, digital displays, and stability testing, FMVSS 135 is merely the most immediate hurdle. The true scope of any production impact depends on whether investigators challenge those other missing controls. 6⃣ How much could this actually slow the Cybercab ramp? Balancing these factors, there is roughly a 40% to 60% chance the audit creates a meaningful temporary drag on the pedal-less Cybercab rollout. Yet the likelihood of the Cybercab remaining trapped under an annual 2,500-vehicle cap long-term is low—likely under 20%. Federal policy is actively shifting to accommodate purpose-built autonomous vehicles, making this a classic timing mismatch rather than a fundamental rejection of driverless design: Tesla brought the vehicle to market before legacy rules finished modernizing. That mismatch can certainly delay scaling and push volume timelines out, but a temporary administrative bottleneck is vastly different from a permanent ceiling. Tesla backed its vision through self-certification, and NHTSA is auditing that bet against rules written for human drivers while simultaneously rewriting those rules for autonomy. The entire rollout now hinges on a single question: will NHTSA finish updating the rulebook before its own audit hits the brakes on Tesla’s ramp?

When Elon Musk revealed the Cybercab for the first time, in 2024.

It’s time for takeoff. Welcome to Louisiana, @SpaceX.

Jensen Huang was asked about the people technology left behind. He didn't offer a plan. He said the gap already closed. Huang: "All of a sudden artificial intelligence closed that technology divide." That divide was never a gap in ability. It was a language requirement. Huang: "Anybody could be a software programmer now." Every tool we ever built charged admission, and the price was always a language. The press needed literacy. The engine needed the manual. The computer needed code. Every tool in history had the same shape. The human moved toward the machine, compressed into a form it could parse. Whoever couldn't compress stayed outside. Code was always a human speaking machine. Seventy years of people translating themselves down into something a processor would accept. It just learned to speak back. Nothing has ever moved in that direction before. So we sorted people by the toll and pretended we were sorting by mind. The ones who paid became skilled. Everyone else became unskilled, a word that has never once described a real person. It only meant fluent in nothing the market was buying. Huang: "Everybody who are really gifted at their craft but maybe they don't know how to scale themselves with technology, they now have AI to help scale them." The best cook in a village of four thousand died the best cook in a village of four thousand. Not from a shortage of ability, but from a second requirement that had nothing to do with the first. Go back far enough in your own family and there is someone who was extraordinary at something. The world never found out. Neither did they. Ability was never distributed by geography. Access was, and access is the only thing that got recorded. Every system you move through in a day was built by the narrow band who could speak to a machine. Not the best ideas anyone had. The ideas that survived translation. We have never once seen what the rest of the species would have made. The scarcity was never in the talent. It was in the distance between holding it and reaching anyone. That distance was the product the technology industry sold. Huang: "They're welcomed into the world's economy, not burdened by technology anymore because AI made that possible." Burdened. Technology sold itself as leverage for a century, and the man supplying the whole industry just called it a weight. A developer you couldn't afford. A site that broke on a Sunday with no one to call. You paid the technology industry for permission to be findable. Nobody on earth got smarter this decade. The door stopped asking for a password. Huang: "Five years from now, it is likely that we're all going to be more gainfully employed. The economy is gonna be more productive." He grounds that in the labor shortage already on the books. Open work with nobody there to do it, inside an economy panicking about a machine that takes work away. Both cannot be true. The fear says there won't be enough work for us. The ledger says there aren't enough of us for the work. Every time a tool stopped requiring a specialist, the specialist lost a monopoly and everyone else gained a century. Writing left the scribes. The press left the church. The computer left the lab. The barrier was also a shelter. Everyone left outside got to keep the version of themselves that was never tested. For most of history that was a mercy. The wall did the refusing, so you never had to hear it from anyone else. The wall is gone. Now you find out. Nothing about you changed. The requirement did. For the first time, the only thing between what you can do and who it reaches is whether you do it.

Literally true

The path to launch is filled with obstacles and success is only possible through the tireless efforts of many working together towards a common goal. “Critical Path” continues the ongoing Starship series, following SpaceX engineers through the final days before launch of the first Starship V3 and the challenges that come with development of the world’s most powerful and fully reusable rocket.

You guys he’s doing this for clicks and views. He’s just trying to become more popular. He knows it’s nonsense but look he gets us to respond. Anything for clicks and views kinda like Megan Kelly and Candace Owens.