US to Explore Allowing Driverless Cars Without Steering Wheels

The head of the top U.S. auto safety regulator said the agency “absolutely” will consider ending requirements that driverless cars include steering wheels, a potential boon for Tesla Inc. and other robotaxi companies rethinking traditional vehicle design.

“If you’re developing a vehicle that is designed never to be driven by a human operator, it doesn’t make any sense to require manual controls,” Jonathan Morrison, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said Thursday in a CNBC interview.

Related: Companies Must Address Self-Driving Car Interference With Emergency Vehicles, NHTSA Says

The comments follow NHTSA’s move last month to update federal safety standards to remove the mandate for manual brake pedals in autonomous vehicles. The changes, part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to modernize rules for driverless cars, could ease the path for purpose-built autonomous vehicles including Tesla’s Cybercab, a two-seat electric car that lacks a steering wheel or foot pedals.

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has advocated for policy changes that would support broad commercial deployment of self-driving vehicles, including calling for a federal framework for driverless cars. The automaker, which is working to stand up a robotaxi business, has started producing Cybercabs in recent months but has yet to deploy them broadly.

Related: Tesla Settles Lawsuit Over Deadly Crash Involving Full Self-Driving

The robotaxi market includes a number of big-name players, including Amazon.com Inc.’s Zoox and Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, the leading operator of paid robotaxi rides in the U.S.

Morrison didn’t specify timing or other details of any potential reevaluation of steering wheel rules. The brake pedal change would only apply to vehicles designed to operate exclusively without a human driver, while leaving existing rules unchanged for all other types of cars.

Top photo: Traffic on I-76 in Philadelphia. Bloomberg.

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