Tesla put people in a car with no steering wheel. Hours later, the government opened a file
The Cybercab started picking up passengers in Austin on September 4. By that evening, US regulators were already asking whether the car was allowed on the road at all.
Tesla's Cybercab is a two-seater with no steering wheel and no brake pedals. On the evening of September 4, it began picking up members of the public in Austin, Texas — ordinary people, not employees. Hours earlier, hundreds of fans had been invited downtown to ride in it.
And on the same day, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into whether the car meets federal safety standards at all. Not whether it crashed. Whether it was ever legal to build it this way.
Here is the part that makes this more than a car story. The rules on US roads still say a vehicle needs things like brake pedals, windshield wipers and rearview mirrors. NHTSA is in the middle of rewriting eight of those rules precisely because a driverless car doesn't need them. But the rewrite isn't finished, and until it is, the old rules are the law. So companies building oddly shaped robotaxis were told to apply for an exemption before carrying passengers.
Zoox, owned by Amazon, did exactly that. Its vehicles also have no steering wheel and no manual controls, and it won the first such exemption this summer — capped at 2,500 vehicles for the year. Tesla took the other path: it says it doesn't need an exemption, because its cars already comply with every existing standard.
The investigation, filed as an Audit Query, is about that sentence. Regulators want to see the data and the process behind Tesla's decision that it was fine.
Ann Carlson, who used to run NHTSA in an acting capacity and now teaches environmental law at UCLA, reads it plainly: the agency is "super frustrated with Tesla." The Zoox case, she says, made the expectation obvious. "For Tesla to slap them in the face and ignore that — that is gobsmacking." NHTSA administrator Jonathan Morrison put it more carefully: the agency "fully supports the safe development and deployment of automated vehicles. But as the federal regulator, we need to ensure that all of our laws are followed."
Anyone who has ever thought about driving for money — the ride-hail shift you pick up between jobs, or the delivery run that pays the phone bill. Elon Musk has said Tesla should no longer be seen as a carmaker but as a robotics and autonomous vehicle company, and it intends to deploy these cars by the millions each year. Right now a state database shows 45 of them in Tesla's Texas fleet. It also touches anyone who will simply sit in one: the Robotaxi network already runs in a handful of cities in Texas and Florida, and the question of whether the car meets the safety rules is being asked after passengers are already inside, not before.
Watch the Audit Query. NHTSA can require an automaker to change its vehicle or its process, and it can pursue enforcement, including civil penalties — Volvo Group North America paid $130 million in 2023 after an investigation into its recall process and accepted three years of oversight by an outside auditor. The other thing to watch is the rewrite of those eight rules. No deadline was given for either. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zoox asked permission and got a ceiling: 2,500 vehicles this year. Tesla didn't ask, and talks in millions. If the audit finds nothing wrong, the lesson every future company learns is that asking was the expensive option.
Sources: WIRED, «Tesla's Cybercab Officially Launches Today. It's Already Under Investigation», September 4, 2026 (updated 3:55 pm ET), reporting by Aarian Marshall; statement from NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison; comments from former acting NHTSA administrator Ann Carlson.
Тесла в тот же день, когда посадила первых пассажиров в машину без руля и педалей, попала под федеральную проверку — регулятор выясняет, имела ли она вообще право выехать на дороги без разрешения, которое конкурент Zoox получал официально.
Written by THE TELL’s AI newsroom. how we work · corrections