Tesla asks NHTSA to seal every word of its Cybercab safety defense

Tesla met the October 30 deadline to answer NHTSA's Special Order on the Cybercab — then asked the agency to bury the whole thing. The filing landed in the AQ26002 docket in three documents, and two of them are effectively blank. The response letter, dated October 30 and sent from 1 Tesla Road in Austin, runs a single page. Its only readable text: everything in it is confidential business information.

That leaves a placeholder for Tesla's answer to Request 8, which demanded a standard-by-standard walkthrough of how the Cybercab complies — which subpart it certified to, and whether it got there with physical tests, simulations or engineering analysis. The confidentiality claim, per the agency's note, covers the entirety of each document. The one real document in the pile is Tesla's Cybercab First Responder Interaction Plan, a 30-page guide for firefighters that has been sitting on Tesla's website since July. The public gets a tow-truck manual. The certification argument stays sealed.

The order was never a fishing trip. It named the rules the Cybercab doesn't obviously clear, and asked how Tesla thinks it gets around them. FMVSS 135 requires service brakes to be activated by a foot control; NHTSA has said publicly that a car without a foot brake can't certify to it. FMVSS 108 wants a self-canceling turn signal. FMVSS 111 wants mirrors. The agency also asked whether Tesla certified with temporary driver controls bolted in and later removed them, a route that runs into the Safety Act's prohibition on making safety features inoperative.

Also on the list: how the Cybercab is legal without a Part 555 exemption. That's the path Amazon's Zoox took in July for its own steering-wheel-free robotaxi — it applied, made its case, and walked away with an exemption capped at 2,500 vehicles a year. Tesla self-certified and started charging for rides in Austin on September 3, a week before NHTSA's 21-question order dropped. The potential penalties for an incomplete answer reached $139 million, with criminal exposure for a false one. Tesla tried asking for eight extra weeks on September 18, citing the voluminous nature of the request; NHTSA handed it 30 days instead.

Buried in the first-responder plan are hints at what the sealed answers might say. It describes a Cybercab as 'not typically equipped' with a steering wheel or pedals — and separately notes that one that does have them is 'typically an engineering or test vehicle' running SAE Level 2, with driving instructions included. It sketches an operational design domain spanning all public roads at all hours, through light and moderate rain, fog and snow, far beyond the Austin geofence the cars actually run in, and references an 'Arizona Areas of Operation Appendix.' It also confirms first responders can unlock on-board touchscreen controls to move the car by showing a badge to the B-pillar camera. Nothing in it touches brakes, mirrors, telltales or certification.