The Steering Wheel Is Next: NHTSA Signals the End of a Century-Old Requirement

For as long as cars have existed, they have had steering wheels. It is so fundamental an assumption that no one ever wrote a law about it — it was simply built into every safety standard, every crash test protocol, every car design since the beginning of motoring. That assumption is now being formally dismantled.

On July 9, 2026, NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison told CNBC that the agency would "absolutely" consider ending the federal requirement for steering wheels in vehicles designed to operate without a human driver. "If you're developing a vehicle that is designed never to be driven by a human operator, it doesn't make any sense to require manual controls for the vehicle," Morrison said. "I think the answer is pretty clear there."

No formal rulemaking has been announced yet — but this is the clearest signal from America's top road safety regulator that the physical architecture of autonomous vehicles is about to change fundamentally.

Why This Matters More Than It Sounds

The steering wheel requirement isn't just a design quirk. It sits at the heart of a regulatory knot that has been slowing autonomous vehicle deployment for years.

Under current Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), every vehicle sold in the United States must comply with rules written around the assumption of a human driver — including a steering wheel, a brake pedal, a transmission selector, and dozens of other controls. For companies building vehicles specifically designed never to be driven by a human, this creates an impossible situation: they are legally required to include hardware that serves no purpose in their vehicle.

The workaround has been painful. Manufacturers can petition NHTSA for individual exemptions from FMVSS requirements — but those exemptions are capped at just 2,500 vehicles per manufacturer per year. That limit is fine for testing. It is completely unworkable for commercial scale.

Tesla's Cybercab — the two-seat robotaxi with no steering wheel and no pedals that began production earlier this year — has been sitting in exactly this regulatory grey zone. The car exists. Tesla has been testing it on Austin streets. But it cannot be commercially deployed at scale without an exemption that the current framework makes nearly impossible to grant at volume.

Morrison's comments suggest that is about to change.

A Regulatory Shift That Has Been Building

This week's statement did not come out of nowhere. NHTSA has been systematically dismantling FMVSS requirements that assume a human driver, piece by piece:

March 2026: NHTSA proposed amending FMVSS No. 102 to exempt fully autonomous vehicles without steering wheels or pedals from the transmission shift position display requirement.

June 2026: The agency proposed removing the requirement for manual brake pedals in vehicles built exclusively for autonomous operation — updating FMVSS No. 135. The public comment period runs through July 27.

July 9, 2026: Morrison publicly signals the steering wheel itself is next.

The pattern is clear: NHTSA is working through every physical control requirement in sequence, clearing the path for purpose-built autonomous vehicles one rule at a time. The steering wheel announcement is the most significant yet, because it is the most symbolically and practically central of all the requirements.

Critically, these changes apply only to vehicles designed from the outset to operate without any human driver. Existing FMVSS requirements remain fully in place for all conventional vehicles.

Who Benefits — and How Much

Tesla is the most immediately affected company. The Cybercab has no steering wheel and no pedals — it was designed from the ground up as a vehicle that a human will never drive. Under current rules, Tesla needs a per-vehicle exemption to deploy it commercially. If NHTSA removes the steering wheel requirement, the Cybercab becomes legally deployable at the scale Tesla needs to make its robotaxi economics work. Elon Musk has been publicly pushing for exactly this regulatory change for years. See our full breakdown in Tesla Robotaxi vs. Waymo: An Honest Head-to-Head Comparison.

Zoox is in a structurally similar position. Amazon's purpose-built robotaxi has no steering wheel, no pedals, and no driver's seat. It has been operating in Las Vegas and San Francisco offering free rides precisely because it cannot legally charge fares until NHTSA grants commercial clearance. Zoox filed a petition for an FMVSS exemption that was still under NHTSA review as of late June 2026. A broader rule change would resolve this far more cleanly than a vehicle-by-vehicle exemption process — we walk through the vehicle in Zoox: Inside Amazon's Robotaxi With No Steering Wheel.

Waymo is less directly affected in the short term. Its current fleet — Jaguar I-Paces and Hyundai Ioniq 5s — are modified production vehicles that retain steering wheels and manual controls, even though no one ever uses them in commercial service. Waymo's next-generation vehicle, the Geely-built Ojai minivan expected to launch commercially in late 2026, was designed with autonomous operation in mind — a steering wheel rule change opens up more radical design options for that platform and its successors. Context on Waymo's expansion is in Waymo Expands Robotaxi Service to Five New Cities.

The Other Side of the Same Announcement

Morrison's comments did not come in isolation. On the same day, he addressed a very different problem — one that complicates the narrative of a regulator simply clearing the path for autonomous vehicles.

On July 8, 2026, NHTSA sent a formal letter to autonomous vehicle developers warning them about what it called a "clear pattern" of driverless vehicles interfering with emergency response scenes. The agency documented multiple incidents where autonomous vehicles entered active accident scenes, blocked ambulances and fire trucks, or failed to respond appropriately to instructions from first responders. NHTSA said it would schedule meetings with all major AV developers by the end of July to demand solutions. This echoes the operational-safety issues we covered in Waymo Recalls 3,871 Robotaxis After Cars Drove Into Active Construction Zones.

The simultaneous messages are deliberate: NHTSA is willing to loosen hardware requirements, but it is tightening behavioral accountability in exchange. The regulator's position appears to be: we will let you build vehicles without steering wheels, but those vehicles need to demonstrate they can handle the situations a human driver would handle with a steering wheel.

Morrison himself acknowledged the tension, noting that when autonomous vehicles encounter situations they cannot handle, "oftentimes the best thing to do is to stop in place" — while also acknowledging that "that leads to some frustrating situations" for emergency responders.

What Happens Next

No formal rulemaking on steering wheels has been initiated. Morrison's comments are a signal of intent, not a rule change — and NHTSA rulemaking typically takes 12–24 months from proposal to final rule, including public comment periods.

The more immediate regulatory developments to watch are:

July 27, 2026 — The public comment period closes on NHTSA's brake pedal exemption proposal (FMVSS No. 135). The response to that proposal will tell us a lot about how fast the broader deregulatory push can move.

End of July 2026 — NHTSA's promised meetings with AV developers about emergency scene interference. The outcomes of those conversations could shape what behavioral requirements accompany any hardware deregulation.

Zoox exemption decision — Still pending as of June 2026. A NHTSA decision to grant or expand Zoox's commercial exemption would be the first concrete test of whether the new regulatory philosophy translates into action.

For European readers, the US regulatory shift also matters for a different reason: it creates pressure on the EU and UK to keep pace. The new EU Autonomous Vehicle Act establishes a framework for Level 4 vehicles, but it too was written around the assumption of vehicles that have manual controls available. If the US moves to permit genuinely control-free vehicles at scale, European regulators will face questions about whether their framework needs updating to match. We covered the EU framework in EU Passes Landmark Autonomous Vehicle Act and the broader legal picture in Self-Driving Cars in Europe: What's Legal and What's Not in 2026.

The Bigger Shift

The steering wheel has always been more than a control input. It is the physical symbol of human authority over the vehicle — the thing you grab when you need to take over, the thing that tells the law that a human being is responsible for what happens next.

Removing it from the regulatory requirement is not just a design change. It is a statement about where responsibility for vehicle behaviour now lies. If there is no steering wheel, there is no driver. If there is no driver, the manufacturer is the responsible party — for every mile, every decision, every outcome.

NHTSA appears ready to make that trade. The steering wheel era of the automobile may be ending — not in every car, but in a growing class of vehicles where a human was never going to touch it anyway.

*Related: Zoox: Inside Amazon's Robotaxi With No Steering Wheel · Tesla Robotaxi vs. Waymo: An Honest Head-to-Head Comparison · Self-Driving Cars in Europe: What's Legal and What's Not in 2026*