The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an Audit Query into how Tesla certified its two-seat Cybercab as meeting federal vehicle safety standards. NHTSA opened the query, numbered AQ26002, on September 3, 2026 — the same day Tesla began limited commercial Cybercab rides in Austin, Texas, through its Robotaxi app.
What NHTSA is looking at
In the United States, automakers self-certify that a new vehicle meets Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) before selling it; regulators can review that certification afterward. Electrek reports that NHTSA’s query covers roughly 1,000 Cybercabs and will examine “the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab,” including the extent to which Tesla concluded that certain FMVSS rules don’t apply to the vehicle. The agency said the inquiry was prompted by public information about the vehicle.
The Cybercab doesn’t have a steering wheel, pedals, or side mirrors — equipment that most existing safety standards assume every car has. Tesla’s certification approach was to declare a number of those human-control-specific standards inapplicable to a vehicle with no human controls at all. NHTSA’s audit is meant to check the technical basis for that call, not to say Tesla got it wrong.
What this means if you’re riding in one
An Audit Query is a fact-finding step, not a recall or a finding of a defect. The Detroit News notes the review sits alongside NHTSA’s existing, separate scrutiny of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software across millions of vehicles — a reminder that regulatory reviews of Tesla’s autonomous systems are already an active, ongoing process, not something new triggered only by Cybercab.
For now, Cybercab rides continue in Austin at the small scale Tesla launched with on September 3. If you’re considering hailing one, there’s no new restriction on riding today — the audit is about verifying Tesla’s paperwork and engineering rationale, a process that can take months. It’s worth checking Tesla’s own Cybercab page before your first ride, since Tesla, not NHTSA, controls where and when the service actually operates.
Photo by Leonardo Gonzalez.