In 2011, Nevada became an early adopter of autonomous vehicles as the first state to allow testing on its roadways. Now, 15 years later, the AV industry appears poised to go beyond testing and free novelty rides around the Las Vegas Strip. Will the shift into the commercial market come with increased scrutiny on safety or a reconsideration of the state’s industry-friendly regulatory environment?
Zoox Inc, an Amazon subsidiary focused on “purpose built” AVs with no manual driving option, is now seeking approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to operate a fleet of robotaxis commercially. Their application,which seeks waivers to existing federal motor vehicle safety standards, is in the public comment period until April 10.
An NHTSA ruling is expected this summer, and assuming it is approved, Zoox plans to launch commercial operations in Las Vegas.
The company already has approval from the Nevada Transportation Authority to operate up to 100 of their robotaxis and charge passenger fares as an “autonomous vehicle network company,” or AVNC. The vehicles are confined to a certain geofenced area, which includes the Las Vegas Strip and nearby attractions.
The same day their NHTSA application was publicly posted to the Federal Register, Zoox announced a multi-year partnership with Uber to make its robotaxis available through the rideshare giant’s app in Las Vegas “beginning later this year.”
Since September, Zoox has been offering free rides to Las Vegas passengers to a limited number of places in the resort corridor. Zoox recently expanded its service area to include additional Las Vegas locations, including “a majority of the major hotels along the Strip” and the Sphere and T-Mobile Arena.
While Zoox is the only company approved by Nevada as an AVNC, other companies are making significant progress of their own.
Waymo, which is considered the robotaxi industry leader nationally, announced late last year it received approval from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles to test its vehicles. Waymo, which is majority owned by Google parent company Alphabet, already operates commercially in several other major cities.
Motional, a Hyundai-Aptiv company, launched limited commercial passenger service in mid-March. The fleet is not fully autonomous — they have human safety operators behind the wheel — but Motional has said it plans to go fully driverless by the end of 2026.
Still more companies, including Tesla and Nuro, are also active in Nevada.
These expansions, combined with Trump administration leaders signaling a desire to establish federal standards for AVs, has states across the country pondering how to legislate and regulate them within their boundaries.
Surveys suggest that many Americans are distrusting of fully autonomous vehicles. But Andrew Fung, a senior analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute who is focused on economics and technology, says that is likely to change, and that it’s likely to change very quickly.
He referenced a study that found a 45 percentage point shift in public opinion in San Francisco between 2023 and 2025. San Francisco, like Las Vegas, has been a hub of AV testing.
“It seems like when people get their hands on these cars and can actually experience them and what they’re like, they’re generally very positive of them,” said Fung. “When they think about them as kind of an abstract thing, the sentiment is much less positive.”
Those findings could serve as a warning to state lawmakers: Get ahead of statutory and regulatory issues around safety, taxation and legal liability now because trying to do so after rapid adoption will be far more difficult.
“I would recommend legislators not take their eye off the ball,” Fung said. “Think about how to get ahead of the issues. How do we set ourselves up for success, so that you’re not chasing behind after the rollout comes?”
Safety, Transparency
Fung coauthored a PPI report calling for unified federal reporting standards and a public-facing data dashboard that could inform both policymakers and everyday people about AVs.
Currently, information about AV testing “is fragmented across federal, state and local lines” and “cannot be directly compared because of differing reporting requirements and platforms,” the report notes.
“If you want people to trust AVs and to be okay with them being on the roads,you really need to start with making the data accessible to people,” said Fung, “regardless of whether you’re for AVs or against AVs.”
PPI notes that California is seen as the most transparent by requiring crash reports and data on the number of times a human driver took control of an autonomous vehicle. But that data is still largely indigestible to the public. On the other end of the transparency spectrum, Texas collects very little data on crashes involving AVs.
“Nevada has been lax in both allowing them in the door and then, once they’re operating, allowing AVs to operate much more freely and with less oversight than some of the other states,” said Fung.
In Nevada, AV companies must submit an incident report to the DMV documenting any crash that resulted in personal injury, property damage exceeding $750, or a traffic violation. Those reports must be filed within 10 days of the incident.
But those reports are not publicly accessible as they are in California. The information from the reports is also not aggregated or audited by the Nevada DMV.
Thomas Martin, a manager at the DMV, told lawmakers during a recent interim legislative committee meeting that the agency just makes sure the reports are properly filled out.
“I will say, one thing we’ve learned is the technology is usually not at fault based on the crash reports and the investigation done by law enforcement,” he added.
That sentiment tracks with what Waymo has self-reported.
Disrupting Jobs, Revenue
For the Nevada State Legislature, it may be too late to fully get ahead of the robotaxis because it is not yet scheduled to meet until early 2027. But there are signs lawmakers could take action when they can.
State Sen. Dina Neal, a Democrat from North Las Vegas, chairs the Legislature’s interim committee on revenue and brought forth the DMV, Nevada Transportation Authority, and Nevada Taxicab Authority to present information about AVs and the changing landscape of getting people from point A to point B.
The Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association lists Nevada as 1 of 12 states with the best regulatory environments for AVs.
One component they no doubt enjoy: Just how little the state charges companies who want to test their AVs on Nevada roadways.
In order to test AVs in Nevada, companies submit an application to the DMV showing they meet the state’s bond and insurance requirements. Once reviewed and approved, the DMV gives them a certificate of compliance for testing along with a set of red license plates and corresponding registration for each vehicle.
The business testing certificate fee is only $100, an amount lawmakers have already flagged as low. That fee has been set at $100 at least since 2013, according to the AV program manager at the DMV.
“There’re other states that charge thousands for these exact same things we charge $100 for,” Martin told lawmakers.
Sean Sever, another DMV administrator, said he has seen states charge as much as $3,500. Over the past decade there’s been no formal proposal to raise that fee in Nevada.
The per vehicle registration fee paid by the AV companies is the same base $33 registration fee paid by Nevadans when registering their personal cars. (The companies do not pay for each car the governmental services tax, which is tied to a vehicle’s MSRP and for most makes up the bulk of their registration cost.)
Representatives from the DMV have said that was a decision made by state lawmakers through legislation.
This story first appeared in Nevada Current. Read the original here.
