Tesla stock soared nearly 10% Friday on the rule changes. Wall Street analysts, and Musk critics, have said that Musk’s role as an adviser to President Donald Trump could put Tesla in position to benefit from any changes to regulations involving self-driving cars.
Other car makers such as Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru and BMW make vehicles with Level 2 systems that help keep cars in lanes, change speed or brake automatically, but Tesla accounts for the vast majority on the road. Vehicles used by Waymo and others with systems that completely take over for the driver, called Automated Driving Systems, will not benefit from the change.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which enforces vehicle safety standards, said the new rules don’t’ favor one type of self-driving system over another, and that raft of changes it announced will help all self-driving automakers.
“No ADS company is hurt by these changes,” the agency said in statement to The Associated Press, using the acronym for Automatic Driving System. It added that the changes also make sense, “With ADS, no driver is present meaning stronger safety protocols are needed.”
Waymo declined to comment for this story. The AP reached out to Tesla but did not receive a reply.
Under the change, any Level 2 crash that is so bad it needs a tow truck to come will no longer be required to be reported if it doesn’t result in death or injury or air-bag deployment. But if a tow truck is called for crashes of vehicles using ADS, it has to be reported.
