NHTSA Audits Cybercab While Waymo Launches With Lyft in Nashville

This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss NHTSA opening an audit query into Tesla‘s Cybercab self-certification hours after commercial launch, Waymo launching in Nashville on both the Waymo and Lyft apps with Flexdrive running operations, and XPENG commissioning a dedicated humanoid production facility in Guangzhou, China.

On September 3rd, NHTSA’s Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance opened audit query AQ26002 covering an estimated 1,000 Cybercabs, triggered by Tesla deploying a bespoke vehicle with no manual controls on public roads with paying members of the public.

The question is not whether the Cybercab is unsafe but whether Tesla unilaterally decided that steering wheel, pedal, and mirror provisions do not apply to a vehicle with no manual controls rather than seeking a Part 555 exemption as Zoox did. Nothing in NHTSA’s query halts operations or caps Tesla’s Cybercab production.

While NHTSA probes Tesla, Waymo went live in Nashville as the first market where its vehicles are bookable through both the Waymo app and the Lyft app with Flexdrive managing the fleet.

As robotaxis scale in America, over in China, XPENG commissioned its humanoid production facility in Guangzhou with an 80% automated build, backed by a $900 million raise at a $6.3 billion post-money valuation, the largest single-round private raise in China’s embodied AI sector.

The Iron humanoid has 76 degrees of freedom and three Turing chips delivering 2,250 TOPS running XPENG’s physical AI model on device, with mass production beginning by the end of 2026.

Episode Chapters

• 0:00 KPMG Sponsor Introduction
• 01:02 Signal 1: NHTSA Opens Audit Query into Tesla Cybercab
• 32:00 Signal 2: Waymo Launches on Lyft in Nashville
• 47:11 Signal 3: XPENG Commissions Humanoid Production Facility

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