Unsupervised FSD may roll out faster if Elon Musk gets into government

Elon Musk will push for a federal autonomous vehicle regulation if he gets appointed to the promised role in a newly minted government efficiency commission.

During the quarterly earnings call, Tesla's CEO answered questions about his claim that the automaker will launch unsupervised FSD next year, but in just two states. Elon teased this unsupervised FSD release during the unveiling of the driverless Robotaxi, which he said will arrive at a sub-$30,000 price in 2026.

Even before that, however, Model 3 and Model Y owners, especially those on HW4, will potentially be able to experience truly unsupervised self-driving in Texas and California. The reasons that Tesla thinks it will have a chance to launch unsupervised FSD in those two states in 2025 are rather different, though.

Tesla has chosen Texas because it has a rather liberal approach to regulations, while California may be mired in red tape, but already has experience with autonomous vehicle permits for companies like Waymo. According to Tesla's Lars Moravy:

All our vehicles today that are produced that are autonomous capable meet all those regulations, Cybertruck meets those regulations. And so the deployment of the vehicle to the road is not a limitation. What is a limitation is what you said at the state level, where they control autonomous vehicle deployment. Some states are relatively easy, as you mentioned for Texas. And so other ones have in place like California that may take a little longer. Other ones haven't set up anything yet, and so we will work through those state by state.

After launching unsupervised FSD in California and Texas, Tesla will aim to get approval in other states by the end of 2025. States only started looking into such regulations in 2017, said Tesla, but the work has since "stalled," so Tesla will have to go through each individual state to spearhead autonomous vehicle adoption.

According to Musk, unsupervised FSD will be rolled out much faster if the regulations are at the federal level, so that is what he will be working on if he gets the promised government efficiency lead role after the election.

There should be a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles. I mean, that's how the FMVSS has worked. Federal Motor Vehicle. The FMBSS is federal. It really needs to be a national approval is important. There's department of government efficiency. I'll try to help make that happen. And you said for everyone, not just Tesla, obviously. But just, like some things in the U.S. are state by state regulated, for example, insurance. And it's incredibly painful to do it state by state for 50 states. And, I think there should be a natural approval process for autonomy.

What Elon Musk is referring to when he mentions a department of government efficiency here, is the federal commission that an eventual new presidential administration may create.

Elon already expressed interest in consulting such an efficiency commission, even in an unofficial role, and moving autonomous vehicle regulations to the federal level might be one of the priorities he'd be pushing to implement there.

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