Elon Musk isn’t answering the most important questions about the Tesla robotaxi

Will the Tesla robotaxi have a steering wheel or not? Elon Musk won’t say.

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

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

This is because Tesla would need approval from the federal government to implement a robotaxi with a more radical design, which it recognizes in its letter to shareholders.

“While the timing of Robotaxi deployment depends on technological advancement and regulatory approval, we are working vigorously on this opportunity given the outsized potential value,” the company said.

And yet, when asked specifically what regulatory approval Tesla would seek, Musk refused 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” with Waymo’s more “localized” one, which he described as “quite fragile”.

“Our solution is a general solution that would work anywhere,” he added. “It would even work on a different Earth.”

Currently, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) require cars to have basic human controls, such as steering wheels, pedals, rear-view mirrors, and so on. These standards specify how vehicles must be designed before they can be sold in the US. If a proposed new vehicle does not comply with all existing FMVSS, manufacturers may request an exemption. But the government only offers 2,500 exemptions per company per year.

The exemption cap would theoretically prevent any AV company – including Tesla – from mass deploying purpose-built autonomous vehicles. AV advocates have tried to pass legislation to lift the cap and allow more driverless vehicles on public roads, but the project has stalled in Congress due to questions about liability and the readiness of the technology.

So far, only one company has been granted an exemption from the FMVSS: Nuro, which uses them to deploy a small number of driverless delivery robots in Texas and California. Cruise, which is owned by GM, applied for an FMVSS exemption for its steering-wheel, pedalless Origin bus — but it was never approved and now the Origin is on hold indefinitely. Amazon’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 chosen to skip this step entirely. All of Waymo’s driverless vehicles have traditional controls, despite operating on public roads without safety drivers. The company said it would eventually introduce a vehicle without a steering wheel, but has not yet said when or if it would seek an exemption from the FMVSS.

All of this means that Tesla faces similar regulatory hurdles depending on whether it decides to abandon traditional controls or not. There were hints along the way, like design drawings showing the vehicle as a steering wheel-free zone.

Critics have dismissed that the Tesla robotaxi has vaporware, pointing out that Waymo is making about 50,000 passenger trips every week, while Musk continues to make vague promises about a vehicle that has not been seen and may never actually exist.

Musk is certainly banking on this, repeatedly emphasizing that Tesla is fundamentally an AI company, not a traditional car company. And yet, he’s unwilling to be transparent about the real obstacles the company will likely face as it races to make this vision a reality.

We’ll have to wait until October to get a real answer – or perhaps even later, pending further delays.