Tesla Marks Its Whole Cybercab Safety Response Confidential, and Only a Firefighter Guide Is Public

Tesla asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to treat its entire sworn response about the Cybercab as confidential business information, Electrek reported on Nov. 5. The response letter, filed on the Oct. 30 deadline, is one page and says: "The entirety of this file is confidential business information."

NHTSA has not commented on the request, and it has not found the Cybercab noncompliant with any standard.

What the Cybercab special order asks

NHTSA issued Special Order AQ26002 on Sept. 10 with 21 requests, Electrek reported. Civil penalties for an incomplete answer reach $139 million, and a false one carries criminal exposure. Motor1, relaying Reuters, described the agency as asking how a vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors cleared federal safety rules.

Tesla asked on Sept. 18 for eight more weeks, until Nov. 20, citing "the voluminous nature of the request." NHTSA gave 30 days instead. The agency's audit covers about 1,000 vehicles, according to Electrek.

What is public in the docket

Request 8 asked Tesla to explain, standard by standard, how it determined compliance, including which subpart it certified to and whether it ran physical tests, simulations or engineering analyses. The public placeholder for it is empty. NHTSA's note says the confidentiality request covers "the entirety of each document."

The only substantive public document is the Cybercab First Responder Interaction Plan, version 1.2, dated Sept. 3. It is a 30-page guide for firefighters and police that has been on Tesla's website since July. It says the Cybercab is "not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals," and that a version with them "is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy."

The guide says nothing about brakes, mirrors, telltales or certification.

Standard or path	What it requires	Public answer
FMVSS 135	Service brakes activated by a foot control	None
FMVSS 108	A turn-signal control that cancels when the steering wheel turns	None
FMVSS 111	Mirrors	None
Part 555 exemption	Agency permission to deviate from a standard	Tesla self-certified instead

Amazon's Zoox obtained a Part 555 exemption in July, capped at 2,500 vehicles a year, per Electrek. Tesla did not seek one.

How the confidentiality claim is decided

Confidentiality requests go to NHTSA's Chief Counsel under 49 CFR Part 512. The agency decides whether the claim holds and can order a public version released if it does not, per Electrek. The number that matters is not the page count but the ruling date, and NHTSA has not published one.

There is a precedent. In June 2025, Tesla asked NHTSA to keep its answers about the original Austin Robotaxi launch confidential, and those answers never became public, Electrek said. Electrek argues the legal theory behind the Cybercab certification is not a trade secret and that Zoox's and Waymo's comparable materials are public. That is Electrek's position, and Tesla has not responded to it in the docket.

The two reports differ on the start of paid service. Electrek dates paid Cybercab rides in Austin to Sept. 3; Motor1 says the launch event was Sept. 3 and limited paid rides began the next day.

For how another robotaxi operator discloses its build, see this site's coverage of Waymo's Toyota-built vehicle for Japan, and for Tesla's other hardware disclosures, its Fremont Optimus line.

What would change this read

A Chief Counsel ruling that orders a redacted version of Request 8 into the docket would show which standards Tesla says apply and how it tested for them. A ruling that upholds the claim in full would leave the firefighter guide as the only public description of the vehicle's certification basis. NHTSA has not given a date for either.