California is "re-examining" the need to regulate the Tesla FSD beta

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is revisiting its opinion that it does not regulate Tesla's fully automated driving (FSD) beta software. The news comes after numerous safety advocates and regulators expressed concern about the company's willingness to allow its customers to test its secondary driving capabilities in public.

The state's DMV oversees the nation's largest self-driving car test program, with more than 60 companies allowed to operate test vehicles on public roads. Only a handful of companies are approved to operate fully autonomous vehicles without a safe driver, and even fewer are approved to deploy vehicles for commercial purposes.

Unlike other companies that conduct autonomous vehicle testing in the state, Tesla is using its own customers rather than trained safety drivers to monitor the technology. Tesla owners have to pay $12,000 for the FSD option, up from $10,000 last year. While Tesla does have 32 vehicles registered with the DMV right now, it often reports little or no mileage traveled in autopilot mode.

DMV has said in the past that Tesla's FSD doesn't fall into its self-driving vehicle test program because it still requires a human driver to monitor the vehicle. But in a letter sent to state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, the agency is now making it "revisit" that decision.

DMV director Steve Gordon said in the letter that the agency previously thought the FSD beta was not covered by the DMV's autonomous vehicle regulations, but recently it notified Tesla that it would revisit the decision "after a recent software update, a video showing dangerous use of the technology, a public investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and hearing from other experts in the field." It is reported that NHTSA is currently investigating the incident involving Tesla vehicles using self-driving technology to hit a parked emergency vehicle.

"If the capability of the feature meets the california definition of a self-driving car in California law and regulations, then dmv will take steps to ensure that Tesla operates under the appropriate self-driving car license," Gordon wrote.

Gordon went on to note that dmv has demonstrated several beta versions of the FSD, and concluded after consulting experts at the University of California, Berkeley, that it was a Level 2 system. In a demonstration in November 2020, dmvs found that vehicles could not safely complete all of their driving tasks.

In addition, Gordon also quoted a letter from Tesla in which the company made a list of restrictions ... This includes the inability to identify or respond to "static objects, road debris, emergency vehicles, construction areas, large uncontrolled intersections, bad weather, complex vehicles on driving paths, and unmapped roads."

DMV is also censoring Tesla for using the term "Full Self-Driving" in its brand, which has been criticized by experts and government officials as misleading to customers.

Depending on the DMV's decision, Tesla may find itself plagued by a whole host of new regulatory issues. Companies testing self-driving vehicles in California must report any vehicle collisions — no matter how minor — and how often human drivers are forced to control self-driving vehicles.