The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has granted Tesla conditional approval to operate its Full Self-Driving software without driver supervision on US interstate highways, marking the most significant federal approval for autonomous vehicles in American history.
The approval, which comes with strict conditions and a mandatory data-sharing agreement with NHTSA, initially covers highway driving only. City street autonomous operation will require a separate approval process expected to take another 12-18 months.
Tesla says the current version of FSD has logged over 3 billion miles of supervised driving data in the US alone, and its AI-driven neural network has processed more than 10 billion video frames from its fleet of 5 million American vehicles.
"This is the Wright Brothers moment for autonomy," Elon Musk posted on X. "Every American who drives a Tesla is about to get their commute back."
The approval is expected to intensify competitive pressure on Waymo, Cruise, and other autonomous vehicle companies that have spent decades and billions of dollars pursuing the same goal through a more conservative, sensor-heavy approach.
Insurance industry analysts estimate that widespread autonomous driving adoption could reduce US traffic fatalities — currently around 40,000 per year — by up to 70% over the next two decades, since 94% of crashes are caused by human error.
