NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said Thursday that requiring steering wheels in fully driverless vehicles no longer makes sense, signaling such mandates could be removed within the next five to ten years.
Morrison made the remarks during a CNBC interview, less than two weeks after the safety agency proposed scrapping the brake pedal requirement for purpose-built autonomous vehicles under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 135.
Asked whether the steering wheel could follow within the next decade, Morrison did not hedge.
“Absolutely,” he stated. “If you’re developing a vehicle that is designed never to be driven by a human operator, does it make any sense to require manual controls for the vehicle? I think the answer is pretty clear there.”
No formal rulemaking on steering wheels has been announced.
However, Morrison’s comments represent the clearest signal yet from the current administration that NHTSA views the logic behind its brake pedal proposal as extending to all manual controls.
Brake Pedal Proposal
The brake pedal removal proposal, published on June 26, is open to public comment until July 27.
Speaking about it during the interview, Morrison framed it as a matter of regulatory common sense.
“If you have a vehicle that’s designed never to be operated by a human, it doesn’t make sense to require a brake pedal. It makes sense to require braking standards,” he said.
He drew a historical parallel to illustrate the point.
“If you’re looking to require a brake pedal, that’s kind of like the government saying, I’m sorry, Mr. Ford, you can’t build that Model T because it doesn’t have horseshoes,” the administrator noted, adding that “we need to stop that approach of blocking innovation in ways that don’t enhance safety and just don’t make sense.”
NHTSA’s brake pedal proposal preserves existing stopping-distance performance requirements.
Vehicles equipped with automated driving systems that retain a steering wheel, pedals, or any manual driving interface remain subject to all existing FMVSS requirements.
The carve-out applies only to purpose-built robotaxis, autonomous shuttles, and delivery vehicles never designed for human operation.
Steering Wheel
The steering wheel question has its own regulatory history.
The Biden administration proposed and finalized a rule allowing autonomous vehicles to operate without steering wheels.
Morrison’s remarks suggest the Trump administration may eventually go further — not just granting individual exemptions but potentially removing the requirement entirely through FMVSS updates, following the same approach NHTSA is now taking with the brake pedal.
The brake pedal rulemaking is itself part of a broader standard-by-standard review under Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s AV Framework.
NHTSA has already proposed removing FMVSS requirements around windshield wipers, defoggers, tire placards, and transmission shift displays for vehicles that will never be operated by humans.
Tesla Cybercab
Morrison’s signal lands as Tesla accelerates production of the Cybercab — a two-seat robotaxi designed from the outset without a steering wheel or pedals — at its Giga Texas facility in Austin.
The company began offering Robotaxi rides a year ago in Texas with Model Y builds modified with its Full-Self Driving software. Safety drivers were inside the vehicle then.
Tesla intends to provide the service with the Cybercab model.
The comapny shifted to steering-wheel-free Cybercab builds in April, after months of producing test units equipped with temporary steering wheels, pedals, and side mirrors.
Production activity at Giga Texas has continued to intensify.
X user Joe Tegtmeyer, who regularly shares drone footage of the factory, posted two weeks ago that he’d seen “more than 150 Cybercabs today driving or parked all over the Giga Texas site.”
These included “more drop off testing near the factory, three large groups in the outbound lot, testing on the test track & coming off the highway frontage roads.”
Tegtmeyer added that Cybercabs were accumulating in an overflow area south of the end-of-line facility for the first time.
Tesla has never applied for a FMVSS exemption for the Cybercab.
CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly said the company would deploy the vehicle nationwide once regulatory approval was granted.
Amazon-owned Zoox, which also builds a purpose-built robotaxi without traditional controls, applied for and received a FMVSS exemption last year to demonstrate its vehicle.
First Responder Interactions
Morrison also addressed the agency’s recent letter to autonomous vehicle operators — including Waymo, Tesla, and Zoox — demanding they prioritize fixing how their vehicles interact with emergency response scenes.
“When we see unreasonable risks, such as automated vehicles blocking emergency response scenes, we’re issuing a call to action to make sure that automated vehicle companies are prioritizing the safety of the public,” Morrison stated.
The administrator acknowledged some incidents stemmed from the technology’s current limitations.
“When an automated vehicle sees a situation that it doesn’t know how to respond to, oftentimes the best thing to do is to stop in place,” he added, admitting “that leads to some frustrating situations.”
Asked whether NHTSA should require an immediate remote operator to take control when police or emergency medical teams instruct a vehicle to move, Morrison pushed back.
“We are not seeing imminent safety risks that are presented by these vehicles on a day-to-day basis. These are rare circumstances, but every single one of these circumstances, it goes too far,” he said.
Remote driving could introduce its own risks, Morrison explained, and NHTSA favored proactive engineering solutions instead.
NHTSA’s enforcement track record against autonomous vehicle developers has grown in recent months.
The agency oversaw a recall of 3,791 Waymo robotaxis in May after vehicles drove into flooded roads — the fourth Waymo software recall since February 2024. Morrison referenced the pattern directly.
“We’ve investigated a lot of these developers. We’ve overseen a lot of recalls with automated vehicle companies, just like we do with traditional vehicle companies,” he added.
Morrison Defends Expansion Pace
Morrison also weighed in on whether autonomous vehicle companies are adding cities too quickly — a question that has grown louder as both Tesla and Waymo expand their ride-hailing footprints across the United States.
“An automated driving or automated vehicle company, they need to make sure that they’re ready to enter into a new market,” Morrison said.
According to him, companies typically spend considerable resources mapping locations, understanding local traffic rules, and running human-supervised operations before removing the driver from the vehicle.
Still, “prior to launching in a new location, they need to be working with law enforcement. They need to be working with the city officials. They need to be working with the community so that folks know what these vehicles are capable of doing and that they’re ready to go.”
Morrison stopped short of calling for a regulatory slowdown, framing market readiness as a company responsibility rather than a federal mandate.
“I think you can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said. He returned repeatedly to the societal case for the technology.
“This is a technology that will never drive drowsy, will never drive drunk, will never drive distracted. It’s undeniable,” Morrison said. “The ability to have expanded access to personal mobility for people with disabilities, for the elderly, to enable full participation in our society and our economy — we cannot lose sight of those benefits.”
However, Morrison added a caution alongside the enthusiasm.
“If we spend all our time looking at just the concerns with this technology, I think we risk losing our advantage with this incredibly, incredibly revolutionary technology that we want to see succeed,” he noted.
