Wondering what influence Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be having within the newly elected Trump administration? The incoming leaders of the U.S. Department of Transportation are readying to loosen the rules for self-driving vehicles, which would include Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology.
Elon Musk, right, has said he’d push for a federal approval process for self-driving vehicles, if he became part of the Trump administration, which he is.
While no one within the Trump team has come and said Musk is pushing for relaxing the rules, his company would benefit enormously from such a move.
Long a proponent of autonomous driving, Musk has repeatedly said his company’s Full Self-Driving technology will be capable of Level 5 autonomy while continuously extending the date for when that would happen.
The new rules wouldn’t necessarily mean that the current batch of semi-autonomous vehicles would be traveling U.S. roads without restriction, but with advocacy from the Transportation Department, it may not take nearly as long to get legislative approval to get them on the road in large numbers, Bloomberg News reported.
Currently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which oversees the testing of different safety technologies, allows 2,500 vehicles to test self-driving technology. There has been a constant push to expand that number, as high as 100,000 vehicles. The agency’s repeatedly denied the expansion requests.
Trump difference
Tesla CEO Musk gets into a waiting Cybercab, which would certainly get a boost from a more relaxed approval process.
The previous Trump administration attempted to push through a bill through when it held majorities in the House and Senate, but couldn’t get it done.
An attempt during the first year of the Biden administration to merge the bill with other legislation failed when some manufacturers tried to include language that would prevent consumers from suing or forming class-action cases, Bloomberg reported.
The big difference this time around is Musk. He recently pledged to push for a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles. He addressed it during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call in late October, after he’d began actively lobbying for a job in a Trump White House.
Musk has tied the future of Tesla to self-driving technology for years. He’s promised investors and buyers that it would not only improve the safety of Tesla vehicles but potentially make them 10 times more valuable as they would be able to be used to generate revenue when not being driven by owners.
The recent introduction of the Cybercab only acted as a doubling down by Musk on the technology. The company expects to have the vehicles — which he claims will cost less than $30,000 — on the road within two years.
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Widening influence
Trump was decidedly anti-regulatory during his first term and is expected to take a similar approach in his second.
The push to accelerate a streamlined or less rigorous testing and approval process seems to show that, at least early on, Musk is an active and trusted adviser to the president-elect. He’s also in favor of eliminating the $7,500 tax credits available for some purchasers of new electric vehicles.
Trump also said he was against them during his previous term as President, and reiterated that during his campaign. However, having the CEO of the largest EV maker on the planet supporting that notion certainly makes it appear to be a good idea.
Automakers just this weekend sent a letter to Trump asking him to retain the credits. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which advocates for several automakers, said in mid-October that keeping the credits in place was critical to keeping U.S. at the forefront of EV development and sales — ahead of China.
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