In February 2022, I became aware of plans to create and update legislation in Australia that would allow fully Autonomous Vehicles, but believed that a 4 year time horizon was too slow. Last week, we got new information that seems to confirm I was correct.
Last week, we got an updated timeline for the international rollout plans for Tesla’s FSD software, which takes the software upgrade outside the US and to international markets in 2025. Tesla’s FSD Software package currently relies on humans to supervise, but next month on October 10th, the company will detail their dedicated robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals.
Given Tesla has sold the FSD software upgrade into markets like Australia, many Aussies (including me) are keen to understand when it’ll roll out here. As it stands today, there’s no legislative restriction that is preventing its deploying in the FSD Supervised mode of operation, but once the software is ready to relieve people of their driving duties and responsibility changes to the manufacturer, there certainly will be.
Australia has a lot of road rules at the state level, and many of them are inconsistent, despite us living in one country. An Autonomous car would be able to freely travel between states, so it makes sense that legislation is aligned to accommodate this. The wheels of Government turn slowly, at a time where the technology of driverless cars is racing ahead.
If you’re wondering why the focus is on Tesla and not other solution makers like Waymo, Cruise, Baidu, BYD, NIO, XPENG, Ford, GM or others, it’s because exactly 1 of the them have shown an interest in delivering anything more than level 2 driver assist systems in Australia, that one being Tesla.
I reached out to the NTC, a body charged with developing legislation and making recommendations to Government, to see if their plans for the Automated Vehicle Safety Law, expected to commence by 2026 is early enough.
Last week I shared details of Tesla’s response to an NTC consultation paper in June. Tesla made it very clear, they want to discuss matters further with the NTC, so I also asked if the NTC had engaged Tesla in that request.
I also highlighted that Tesla’s AI team shared a timeline for rolling out FSD internationally, with the caveat (pending regulatory approval). Elon followed up from this, after a lot of interest from Australians, confirming they are aiming for a late Q1 2025, early Q2 2025 target for the release of a RHD model. Being a RHD country, its likely this means Australia.
Ultimately my question was this:
What can you tell me about our preparedness to support Tesla’s ambitions, noting that the latest FSD build V12.5.3) still requires driver supervision, but Tesla are clearly asking to work with you in their response paper, for a roadmap that enables them to rollout full autonomy.
Given the opportunity for Autonomous vehicles to save lives, I’d hope that we can enable Tesla (and others) to develop autonomous solutions here and avoid having regulation fall behind the technical developments.
In February 2022 I posted that I believed a 2026 timeline was going to be too late and it appears that was accurate.
Today, the National Transport Commission provided me an official response.
Hi Jason
Thank you for your enquiry.
We confirm that all non-confidential submissions to the recent Automated Vehicle Safety Law (AVSL) Consultation have been published on our website here. This includes Tesla’s submission.
We are still in the process of reviewing and considering the input from the submissions. Once this has been completed, the Commonwealth Government will develop the draft Bill for the AVSL. The NTC, in partnership with state and territory governments will use the feedback from consultation to inform nationally consistent policy positions for state and territory reforms, including the model Australian Road Rules .
As part of the process of developing new policies and laws, the NTC and the Commonwealth may prepare additional impact assessments on any new regulations that have not been considered in previous regulatory impact assessments.
Any future progress updates to this process will be published on the Automated Vehicle page when they are available. To ensure you are kept up to date with this progress, you can sign up for our mailing list here.
Thank you for your interest in the Automated Vehicle Program.
The email version is available below. It’s unfortunately a response that lacked any important detail or urgency from the NTC at a time where Australia’s road toll continues to climb. Autonomous Vehicles will be safer than humans and our legislation should include tests or datasets that prove that. Once an automaker can meet that hurdle, we should open our doors to them because what we’ve tried to date isn’t working.
Humans are humans and no matter how many times we run a TV ad that tries to scare people into putting down their mobile phones, the temptation is too great. People get tired, are impacted by stress, alcohol, drugs and more and the only absolute answer to this is to remove humans obligation to drive the vehicle. Give them a better, more convenient, cheaper transport option and I think many would take it and consider ending their personal vehicle ownership, in favour of calling the type of car they need, when they need it – a robotaxi, without a human driver.