Elon Musk’s Tesla could benefit the most from new rules to report self-driving car crashes

The Trump administration announced this week could allow automakers to report fewer crashes involving self-driving cars, with Tesla likely to be the main beneficiary.

The Transport Department announced Thursday that it will no longer require automakers to report certain types of non-fatal crashes – but the exception only applies to some self-driving cars using the so-called Level 2 system (deployed by Tesla Tesla). Tesla CEO Elon Musk complained that the old reporting rules had thrown his company away with bad views.

Auto industry analysts say that if Tesla and other automakers have to report fewer national database crashes, this could make it harder for regulators to capture device defects and give the public access to information about the company’s overall safety. This will also allow Tesla to tout cleaner records to sell more cars.

“This will greatly reduce the number of crashes reported by Tesla,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an automatic analyst at Tememetry Insight. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities added that Tesla rival Waymo is no exception, “It’s Tesla’s victory, it’s Waymo’s loss.”

Tesla shares soared nearly 10% on Friday in the change of rules. Wall Street analysts and Musk commentators say Musk’s role as an adviser to President Donald Trump could give Tesla the ability to benefit from any changes to regulations involving self-driving cars.

Other automakers, such as Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru and BMW, have a Level 2 system that helps keep the car in the lane, change speed or brake, but Tesla makes up the vast majority of the road. Vehicles used by Waymo and other systems take over the driver entirely, called autonomous driving systems, and will not benefit from the changes.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which enforces vehicle safety standards, said the new regulations do not support one autonomous driving system rather than another, and that a series of changes it announced will help all autonomous vehicle manufacturers.

“No advertising companies were hurt by these changes,” the agency said in a statement to the Associated Press using the acronym of the autonomous driving system. It added that the changes also make sense because “using advertising, the existence of no drivers means a stronger security protocol is needed.”

Waymo declined to comment on the story. The AP contacted Tesla but received no reply.

Under the change, any Level 2 crash is very bad and requires a trailer and no longer needs to be reported if it does not result in death, injury or air strike deployment. However, if a vehicle crash occurs when an advertisement is required, it must be reported.

According to the data’s AP review, most of the partially self-driving vehicle crashes involve Teslas – According to the data’s AP review, there are more than 800 of the 1,040 crashes in total in the past 12 months. It is not clear how many of these Tesla crashes require towing vehicles, as one column requires that the information in the database be mostly blank.

NHTSA said after the story was published that only 8% of reported crashes were cases where some autonomous vehicles had to be towed, and no other qualified crash reporting factors were involved. It is not clear that no drag information is provided.

The easy collapse rule is part of several changes described by the Department of Transportation, a way to “simplify” paperwork and allows U.S. companies to better compete with China in the race to build self-driving cars. The department said it will also move towards national autonomous driving regulations to replace confusing state rules.

“We are playing against China and the bets will never be higher,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday. “Our new framework will cut the traditional tape festival and bring us closer to a national standard.”

Traffic safety regulators are concerned that the Trump administration will completely eliminate NHTSA’s reporting requirements.

A few days after Musk confirmed on a conference call with Tesla investors that the electric carmaker will start launching self-driving Tesla taxi in Austin, Texas in June. Waymo is owned by Google’s parent Alphabet, and the city and several others already have web tellers.

Musk believes that previous reporting requirements are unfair, as Tesla cars use some of their autonomous driving systems and therefore have more miles to log in than any other automaker using this technology. He said his car was safer than most and saved lives.

Tesla’s sales have dropped in the last month as Musk’s support for European far-right politicians and his job as head of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting group in the United States. The company has fixed its future to the full automation of cars, but is now facing fierce competition from its competitors, especially the Chinese automaker Byd.

Disclaimer: This story was published from the Wire Agent feed and the text was not modified. Only the title has been changed.