Federal regulations pass next hurdle

This week's news is preliminary, but a U.S. house committee panel passed some new federal regulations which suggest sweeping change in the US regulatory approach to robocars. Today, all cars sold must comply with the Federal Motor Vehicles Safety Standards (FMVSS). This is a huge set of standards, and it's full of things written with human driven cars in mind, and making a radically different vehicle, like the Zoox, or the Waymo Firefly, or a delivery robot, is simply not going to happen under those standards. There is a provision where NHTSA can offer exemptions but it's in small volumes, for prototype and testing vehicles mostly. The new rules would allow a vendor to get an exemption to make 100,000 vehicles per year, which should be enough for the early years of robocar deployment.