Elon Musk’s gilded robot car barely made it on public roads before federal regulators launched an investigation into the vehicle’s lack of traditional features — many of which are required by law.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was opening an audit query (AQ) into the Tesla Cybercab “to examine the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab and related issues.” At issue is the absence of certain design features such as sideview mirrors, pedals, and steering wheel — all of which are required under the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, or FMVSS.

“Among other things, NHTSA will consider the extent to which Tesla’s certification depended on determinations that certain FMVSS are inapplicable to the Cybercab,” the agency said in a notice. Tesla does not appear to have sought an exemption from these FMVSS rules, thus prompting the investigation.

NHTSA’s investigation covers an estimated 1,000 Cybercabs, although its unclear whether there are even that many to begin with. Tesla has 45 Cybercabs currently registered with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.

“NHTSA fully supports the safe development and deployment of automated vehicles. But as the federal regulator, we need to ensure that all of our laws are followed,” NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said in a press release. “Our approach of balancing innovation with safety oversight will allow the United States to maintain its global leadership in AV innovation.”

NHTSA is currently considering a handful of rule changes that would make it easier for automakers to sell driverless vehicles without traditional controls. But the agency is also trying to get a grip on the rapidly expanding robotaxi market, issuing a letter recently warning operators about vehicles that block emergency responders.

Tesla held a private event in Austin Thursday to celebrate the public launch of the Cybercab. Tesla has said it plans on deploying the vehicle in other cities as part of its Robotaxi service, and will eventually sell the Cybercab to individual customers for an estimated price of $30,000.

In the US, automakers self-certify that their vehicles comply with all the applicable rules in the FMVSS. If there are problems, or a certain vehicle is introduced with glaring issues, like the absence of legally required safety features, then NHTSA can launch an investigation into that self-certification process. That doesn’t block the automaker from continuing its production, but it certainly calls into question that vehicle’s future prospects.

The same thing happened to Amazon’s Zoox when it launched its toaster-shaped, steering-wheel-free autonomous shuttle in 2024, claiming that it complied with all safety standards. NHTSA subsequently launched an investigation into that self-certification process, and while the investigation was ongoing, Zoox was allowed to operate its vehicles, but for demonstration purposes only. The company couldn’t charge passenger fares until NHTSA granted it permission just this past July — two years later.

That certainly raises the question whether Tesla will be allowed to charge for rides in the Cybercab while NHTSA’s investigation is ongoing. Musk is obviously friendly with the Trump administration, but not necessarily with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who oversees NHTSA. (Musk has reportedly called him “Sean Dummy.”) So I wouldn’t necessarily expect any favorable treatment for Tesla, despite the CEO’s status as a major GOP donor.

Of course, this isn’t the only NHTSA investigation into Tesla at the moment. The agency is also probing 3.2 million Tesla vehicles with Full Self-Driving, which could lead to a potential recall. But this certainly lines up with Musk’s philosophy of seeking forgiveness rather than permission when your products skirt the rules.

Update September 4th: Updated to include a statement from the head of NHTSA.

At a private, closed-door event in Austin, Texas today, Tesla officially launched its gilded car of the future: the Cybercab. It’s a huge milestone for Elon Musk, who has been hyping the imminent arrival of driverless cars for years and has bet the future of his company on AI, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robots.

It was an unusually muted event, with no livestream, no journalists, and a very short invite list comprised mostly of pro-Tesla content creators. Tesla influencers planning live shows with the event stream were left streaming the webpage that tracks the number of Tesla robotaxis in Texas instead.

Tesla was keeping a tight lid on the event. Invitee Chuck Cook said the company had him sign an NDA and agreed to an embargo requiring to wait to post content until after the event was over. But if the goal was to blunt criticism, it didn’t work. On X, pro-Tesla accounts who weren’t invited grumbled about the decision; Not a Tesla App accused the company of “dropping the ball.”

As of this week, Tesla has 45 Cybercab vehicles registered with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles — though its not clear how many will be put into commercial service right away. Several vehicles were made available to Tesla influencers in Austin for content creation; the company has been testing them in various cities for months now. Tesla also launched a new website for its Robotaxi service, which includes the rules for riding in the new vehicle. (For example, children under the age of 13 are currently banned from riding in the Cybercab.) Several videos were posted on the company’s social feeds, highlighting the interior, crash test worthiness, and accessibility. (The accessibility video was especially befuddling, showing a wheelchair user getting up to fold and stow his own wheelchair.)

But even with the launch of the Cybercab, Tesla’s robotaxi fleet is still a small player relative to some of its rivals. With the new Cybercabs, the company now has 256 unsupervised autonomous vehicles in operation across six cities, according to Robotaxi Tracker. By comparison, Alphabet’s Waymo is currently operating approximately 4,000 unsupervised vehicles across 14 cities.

There were still many lingering questions about the Cybercab. Two years ago, Musk said the two-seater would be available for purchase, perhaps for a price as low as $30,000. But the company still has yet say when the Cybercab would go on sale. There is a new online form for those interested in “future Robotaxi opportunities,” such as purchasing a fleet of Cybercabs or building “mobility hubs and infrastructure.” But no word on when regular customers could buy one for themselves. (YouTuber Marques Brownlee says his hair is safe for now.)

For the past year, Tesla has been operating a robotaxi service in Texas and Florida using several dozen modified Model Y vehicles, some of which are supervised by human safety drivers and some of which are not. With the introduction of the Cybercab, the company is embarking on a risky new phase that will pit Musk’s stripped-down, less costly approach to autonomy against more established players like Waymo.

The Cybercab, which was first introduced in 2024, is a two-seat sedan with gullwing-style doors and eight cameras that it uses to navigate the world without a driver. The vehicle lacks traditional controls, like steering wheel, pedals, and mirrors — as well as sensors commonly found on other robotaxis, like radar and lidar.

The Cybercab is also the lightest, most range-efficient vehicle Tesla has ever produced. According to documents filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Cybercab runs on a single front-mounted 219 horsepower permanent magnet motor with front-wheel drive, a compact 48kWh battery pack running at 326 volts, and a curb weight of just 3,113 pounds — making it roughly 700 pounds lighter than the lightest Model 3 on the market. That’s roughly the same as a gas-powered compact car, despite the fact that it’s still carrying a relatively heavy lithium-ion battery.

For years, Musk has been promising the imminent arrival of Tesla’s driverless cars, only time and time again to fall short of those predictions. He claimed that 50 percent of the US population would have access to Tesla’s robotaxis by the end of 2025. Today, the vehicles are only available in six cities in Texas and Florida. (Tesla is running a human-driven ridehail service in the San Francisco Bay Area, but has yet to apply for a driverless testing permit from California.)

For Tesla’s vehicle owners, there’s been a string of broken promises. In 2016, Musk promised that every vehicle Tesla produced from then on would have all the technology necessary for self-driving. Years later, he was forced to retract that claim, acknowledging that the hardware in some older vehicles was insufficient to support autonomous capabilities. Musk promised to retrofit those customers’ vehicles, but has yet to offer any details as to how that would work. Tesla is currently facing multiple lawsuits from customers and regulators claiming it has misled the public about its self-driving capabilities.

Today, the company’s $99-a-month Full Self-Driving feature is still just a Level 2 driver-assist system that requires constant human supervision. During Tesla’s first quarter earnings call this year, Musk promised that “unsupervised” FSD would be available to customer vehicles by the end of 2026 “at the earliest,” admitting that complex intersections, bad road markings, and weather were likely to slow the rollout.

Tesla’s fans will likely point to today’s Cybercab launch as a moment of enormous significance for the company. Investors already seem to agree, with Tesla’s stock price trading up nearly six points over the past five days. Analysts view robotaxis as one of the primary justifications for Tesla’s $1.18 trillion valuation, and the key that will unlock the company’s future. Tesla’s EV sales have slowed down in the face of rising competition, especially from China. And Musk has made massive investments in AI and robotics, with some speculating he could try to merge Tesla with the recently public SpaceXAI.

Uber launched a robotaxi service in London, beating Waymo to become the first to offer paid trips in autonomous vehicles in the city. The vehicles use autonomous driving tech developed by Wayve, a UK-based startup, and will initially feature safety drivers behind the wheel.

The launch is a milestone for Uber, which has been plotting a UK launch with Wayve for several years. In beating Waymo to the punch, it allows Uber to set the standard for the robotaxi experience for thousands of Londoners. It’s also an early test of whether there’s appetite for driverless ridehailing beyond the US and China, where most of the world’s robotaxis are currently clustered. (There’s a smattering in the Middle East, too.)

London-based Uber customers who want to try out these new robot-controlled cars can indicate their preference in the app’s settings. When booking a ride through UberX, Uber Comfort, or Uber Electric, riders may be paired with a Wayve-developed autonomous vehicle, but it’s not a guarantee. Wayve is using Ford Mustang Mach-Es for its fleet, followed by the Nissan Leaf in the future.

Safety drivers will monitor the driving from the front seat, though Uber says they won’t control the driving and will gradually be phased out in favor of fully driverless vehicles. Safety drivers are licensed by Transport for London (TfL), the city’s transit authority.

Wayve has around 15 vehicles registered with TfL, so it may be difficult to get matched with one, at least initially. Uber says there will be no geofence — the virtual boundary within which robotaxis are programed to operate — because Wayve’s AV2.0 system is designed to move “beyond the constraints of traditional AV systems.” Wayve expects to offer service “across the entirety of London” not including the airports, Wayve spokesperson Julianne McGoldrick said in an email.

On its website, Wayve describes its AV2.0 system:

The traditional AV1.0 approach relies on hand-engineered stacks, HD maps and a rule-based approach – this limits scalability and the ability to rapidly generalize to new environments or complex scenarios. Wayve’s AV2.0 takes a different path – a single, learned AI driver trained to understand the world, anticipate risk, and adapt to new environments.

The robotaxis will be maintained and serviced by Uber in partnership with UK fleet operator Otto Car. Wayve will stay in charge of the autonomous driving system.

Wayve, which was founded in 2017 by a pair of machine learning PhD students from the University of Cambridge, says its autonomous driving system can learn on the go, adapting to new roads, weather, or driving scenarios much like a human driver. The vehicles use cameras and radar as part of their perception system — but notably do not use lidar, the laser sensor that Waymo and many other robotaxi operators rely on. This puts Wayve in a similar camp as Tesla, which also doesn’t use lidar for its robotaxis.

Still, Wayve claims its system is hardware agnostic, thanks to a software stack that can run on whatever sensors and chips an automaker uses for its vehicles. While additional sensors like lidar can theoretically be integrated if a car manufacturer prefers them, Wayve’s AV2.0 is built to operate autonomously without HD maps or expensive sensors, the company says. In addition to Uber, Wayve is also working with Stellantis on hands-free driving tech. And earlier this year, the startup raised $1.2 billion from Uber, Nvidia, and Stellantis, as well as Nissan and Mercedes-Benz, according to TechCrunch.

Waymo has said it will launch its robotaxis in London before the end of the year. In addition, Lyft is working with China’s Baidu on its own robotaxi service in the city, starting with the neighborhood of Brent.

Uber has been lobbying for a hybrid network made up of human drivers and robotaxis, which clashes with Waymo’s vision of a driver-free, rider-only system. Waymo and Uber still work together in several cities, including Austin and Atlanta, but the companies have increasingly found themselves on opposite sides of the debate — prompting rumors of an imminent breakup. Meanwhile, Uber has made a big to-do about linking up with a variety of AV partners, including Zoox, Avride, Nuro, Motional, Waabi, and of course, Wayve. The company has said it plans on spending upwards of $10 billion to build out its robotaxi business over time.

Update September 3rd: Updated to include additional details about Wayve’s fleet size and service area.

I think automakers are finally getting the memo. Rather than try to reinvent the wheel with its new electric vehicle, Range Rover just made one that looks nearly identical to its lineup of gas-powered SUVs. They didn’t try to pass off some sleek, spaceship-looking pod as a Range Rover. Sometimes familiar designs are the way to go.

Of course, under the surface the Range Rover Electric is nothing like its internal combustion engine sporting brethren. Twin permanent magnet 260kW electric motors are powered by a double-stacked 118.5 kWh lithium-ion battery, with an estimated range of 330 real-world miles.

The all-wheel drive system puts out 542 horsepower and 627 lb.-ft. of torque, which Range Rover describes as “V8 levels of power.” An 800-volt architecture enables DC fast charging from 10–80 percent in just 22 minutes, or about 137 miles in 10 minutes, when plugged into a 350 kW charger. A zero to 60 mph time of 4.3 seconds won’t win it any awards, especially compared to EV rivals like Lucid and Rivian. But this Range Rover probably doesn’t need to blow up any records to make its mark. With a familiar design and decent enough specs, it should be more than sufficient for anyone who has been pining for a touch of British sophistication in their EV shopping.

The wait has certainly stretched on longer than it should have. Range Rover first announced it was working on an electric model over five years ago. It first opened preorders in 2023, promising that customer deliveries would begin a year later. The Jaguar Land Rover–owned brand took its sweet time fulfilling these promises, but now that the cover has been lifted, the automaker is taking orders at a starting price of £154,070 in the UK (or about $140,450 in the US).

JLR says it will produce the Range Rover Electric at its Solihull factory, alongside gas and hybrid models. It’s also touting the number of patents submitted for this EV — 300 — making it the most technologically custom-built Range Rover ever.

How technologically advanced? Try lightning-fast grip control. Instead of waiting for mechanical gears to adjust when tires slip, the electric motors adjust power in 50 milliseconds — 100 times faster than a gas car. This gives instant control on ice, mud, or loose gravel. The one-pedal drive system is tuned for super steep slopes of up to 45 degrees, so you can climb mountains or crawl over obstacles using just the accelerator. And the battery and motors are fully sealed, allowing you to drive through nearly 3 feet of water (900mm) without damaging the vehicle. Lastly, a built-in heat pump reuses waste heat to warm the cabin and keep the battery at the right temperature, preserving up to 25 extra miles of driving range in freezing weather.

All of this sounds great on paper. Stacked up against rivals like the Porsche Macan EV or the Lotus Eletre, the SUV may look even better — especially for those car buyers who still prefer a familiar face on their electric vehicle.

Images by Range Rover

Polestar said the Trump administration strung it along for months before finally rejecting its request to continue selling its electric vehicles in the US under a rule outlawing vehicles with connected software from China.

In an August 18th letter sent to dealers and obtained by The Verge, Polestar said it doesn’t have a clear answer as to why its application to continue selling its EVs in the US was denied, considering its sister company Volvo was authorized to sell its vehicles despite similar corporate ownership. (The letter was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.)

The US Department of Commerce approved Volvo in May 2026 to continue importing and selling its vehicles in the US, despite restrictions tied to its majority Chinese owner, Geely. But one month later, the department rejected Polestar’s similar request, leading to the company to announce it would stop selling its vehicles in the US starting with the 2027 model year. The rule, which originated under the Biden administration, bans the import and sale of vehicles with connected software from hostile countries, including China.

In the letter to dealers, Polestar’s head of product Peter Wexler lays out the timeline of the company’s communications with the Trump administration, starting with a May 29, 2025 application to the
Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) under the Commerce Department. In subsequent meetings, Wexler says Polestar was given the impression that Polestar would be approved, considering its vehicles are functionally similar to Volvo’s.

Jeffrey Kessler, Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, said during an in-person meeting with Polestar’s representatives “that it would be reasonable for Polestar to expect approval of its applications if Volvo Cars was approved to sell its cars under effectively the same shareholding and ownership structure and with the same hardware and software in the Polestar 3 as the Volvo EX90,” Wexler writes.

Polestar told the administration it open to a variety of “mitigation measures” to ensure its vehicles were compliant with the ban on Chinese software, including regular audits, geographic restrictions on data storage and management, and limitations on digital keys and remote access. But the administration declined all such offers, Wexler said.

“BIS never engaged in any such discussions with Polestar,” he writes. “Instead, BIS communicated that it had all the information it required to render a decision.”

Wexler said that Polestar is continuing to press the administration for an explanation on why it was denied approval. The company was sued recently by Polestar dealer Prestige Imports in New Jersey, which accuses the company of engineering its own exit from the US by failing to do enough to satisfy regulators at the Commerce Department.