Lobbying and Regulatory Strategies of US Autonomous Vehicles Companies (cardog.app)

U.S. autonomous-vehicle firms are fighting not just for technical superiority but for the rules that will determine who can scale and how. Major players—Waymo, Tesla, Cruise, Zoox and Aurora—have deployed heavy lobbying, industry coalitions, and ex-regulator hires to shape federal and state laws on market access, safety standards, liability, data sharing and competition. Waymo leans into conventional government affairs (≈$1.76M in 2023) and AVIA coalition lobbying to push for a federal, performance-based AV framework, expanded exemptions for driverless robotaxi fleets, and accessibility rules such as the Autonomous Vehicle Accessibility Act. Tesla (≈$1.13M in 2023) takes a different tack: a slimmer Washington footprint, high-profile CEO advocacy, and resistance to new AV-specific mandates—preferring rules that treat its Full Self-Driving as advanced driver assistance and opposing measures that would curb its on-road beta testing or require broad telematics sharing. Technically and strategically, these lobbying battles have concrete implications for the AI/ML community: whether safety will be validated via performance-based data submissions or prescriptive requirements (e.g., driver monitoring, FMVSS updates); how liability will be assigned if the AV system is legally treated as the “driver”; and whether data-access laws like the REPAIR Act will force telemetry sharing that could erode training-data monopolies. Firms that can demonstrate massive real-world test miles and rigorous data-driven validation stand to influence standards and raise entry barriers, while divergent positions on federal preemption versus patchwork state rules will shape deployment architecture (fleet robotaxis vs. consumer-embedded ADAS) and the competitive landscape for startups and researchers.