Stuck in slow lane, NHTSA proposes new regulatory path for self-driving vehicles

“This is a new and exciting opportunity for all of us,” Ann Carlson, the acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told an audience of industry executives, transportation officials and academics gathered at the Automated Road Transportation Symposium.

She said NHTSA expects to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking on AV STEP this fall.

While the exact number of vehicles allowed remains to be determined, industry experts expect it to be substantially more than the 2,500-vehicle maximum currently permitted through a process that allows companies to request an exemption from federal motor-vehicle safety standards.

That has proven cumbersome.

The proposed AV STEP would not replace the exemption-request process but instead offers an alternate regulatory avenue to the road — one that comes without the caps on the maximum allowable number of vehicles.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the auto industry’s main lobbying arm, welcomed Wednesday’s development, saying it was an “important innovation policy development.”

The advent of AV STEP could be a big help to General Motors in particular. The automaker submitted an exemption request for its Cruise Origin robotaxi in February 2022, and has not yet received a decision from DOT officials.

NHTSA will provide GM with an answer “soon,” Carlson said Wednesday.

GM intends to mass produce the Origin, which does not have controls for a human driver, at Factory Zero, its dedicated EV assembly plant. But the lack of regulatory certainty to date has been one factor that’s hampered plans to rapidly scale.

Industry executives have complained about the lack of prompt decisions on exemption requests; Ford withdrew a request this March that had lingered without an answer since July 2021.

Only one company, delivery bot startup Nuro, has been granted an exemption.

Besides GM, a joint exemption request from Waymo and Aurora regarding self-driving trucks remains pending.

AV STEP ostensibly would offer a faster path, albeit one that’s still an interim patch instead of permanent changes to the federal motor-vehicle safety standards that account for the idea that humans are not always required to operate a vehicle.

“We believe that AV STEP would hasten NHTSA’s progress toward establishing an effective governance structure” for the assessing the performance of automated-driving systems,” Carlson said.

There is a catch.

The agency wants self-driving tech companies to share data on ongoing operations in return for widespread deployments authorized under the new program.

Should many companies participate, it would give NHTSA the opportunity to bolster its own expertise on automated driving through data collected from real-world deployments — which could eventually be used to inform rulemaking regarding autonomous vehicles.

“We believe AV STEP is a way to open up a wealth of data and allow for deployment of noncompliant vehicles,” Carlson said, “where we can benefit from, learn from and enhance our research into automated-vehicle safety and performance.”