A Waymo vehicle sits outside a San Jose theater at a tech event in 2019, when autonomous deployment was still largely experimental. Autonomous vehicles have moved from pilot programs to real-world deployment, but are still waiting to scale.
It was around 10 years ago that the acronym ACES (or CASE) took hold. The letters stand for “autonomous, connected, electric, and shared.” It was called Latest Mobility on the time, representing our optimistic way forward for transportation.
From then to now, none of those paradigms has taken a straight adoption path — though the C could also be suffering through the fewest peaks and troughs, and S has yet to search out its hockey-stick growth.
In the case of the A, there have been breathless proclamations that the subsequent generation wouldn’t even need driver’s licenses. After which the autonomous Uber fatality in Phoenix in 2018, followed by the Cruise incident in 2023 by which a robotaxi dragged a pedestrian after it was hit by one other vehicle, causing Cruise to shut down.
As A lay low in our consciousness for some time, the world turned its attention to the E, though A didn’t go away.
And suddenly, robotaxis are actually all over the place, or at the very least for those who live in one among Waymo’s 10 cities. (In Los Angeles, you’d be hard-pressed to not see 10 Waymos in an eight-mile commute.) On the trucking side, Aurora has already logged greater than 100,000 driverless miles.
Autonomous technology isn’t any longer theoretical; it’s here. But its expansion is now influenced less by engineering breakthroughs and more by regulatory momentum — or lack thereof.
In accordance with Ariel Wolf, partner at Venable and one among the leading voices on autonomous vehicle (AV) policy, 2026 could mark a pivotal turning point.
Technology Is Ready; Policy Is Catching Up
“There are a whole lot of encouraging signs,” Wolf said, pointing to recent activity from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), including early implementation of technical updates to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) and an acceleration of its Automated Vehicle Exemption Program.
These actions show a federal government that’s finally starting to embrace a national framework that can enable the deployment of autonomous vehicles. Still, progress stays uneven and slow by industry standards.
NHTSA’s rulemaking process can take years, and current exemptions allowing AV deployment are capped at 2,500 vehicles per manufacturer annually. That’s manageable at today’s scale, but insufficient for widespread commercialization.
“It doesn’t work to scale an industry,” Wolf said, referring to the present exemption framework.
A 50-12 months-Old Rule Is Holding Back AV Trucking
The disconnect between technology and regulation can also be apparent in autonomous trucking.
Despite billions of dollars in investment and years of development, one among the largest barriers to scaling driverless trucks isn’t technical; it’s a 50-year-old regulation.
Specifically, a rule dating back to the early Nineteen Seventies requires a human driver to position warning triangles inside 10 minutes of a roadside breakdown. “You’ll be able to’t scale the industry if you will have to have someone put out warning triangles,” Wolf said.
The workaround today is temporary: AV firms can apply for short-term waivers to make use of alternatives, equivalent to cab-mounted warning beacons. But those waivers have to be renewed every 90 days, creating uncertainty and limiting long-term planning.
The result’s a bottleneck that has slowed momentum in AV trucking, at the same time as the technology itself has matured.
A Blurred Line Between State and Federal
Complicating matters further is the division of authority between federal and state governments.
Traditionally, the federal government regulates vehicle design and performance, while states regulate drivers, registration, and enforcement. But autonomous vehicles blur that line.
“Is the automated driving system the driving force, or is it equipment?” Wolf said.
That unresolved query has led to a patchwork of state-level approaches. Texas has embraced a streamlined, self-certification model designed to speed up deployment, while California maintains a more hands-on permitting structure and is pushing for greater oversight, including data reporting requirements.
While federal rules can preempt state regulation on vehicle design and performance, states still control how vehicles operate on public roads through permitting, enforcement, data reporting, and insurance requirements. Which means even with federal motion, states retain power over how and where autonomous vehicles might be deployed.
For fleets operating across multiple jurisdictions, that uncertainty adds complexity to deployment planning.
What Could Speed Up AV Deployment
Given the pace of federal rulemaking, probably the most meaningful near-term progress may come from laws relatively than regulation.
The proposed Self-Drive Act would create a everlasting framework for autonomous vehicles, particularly those designed without traditional driver controls. It could also address current exemption limits and supply clearer guidance on how AVs can comply with federal safety standards.
If enacted, it could significantly speed up deployment timelines by providing manufacturers and fleet operators with greater certainty about how one can construct, deploy, and scale autonomous vehicles.
Importantly, the bill includes provisions that reflect the industry’s push for accountability:
The bill would require a national crash database for AVs and a proper “safety case” from each company detailing system performance — provisions that the industry itself has embraced.
The laws might be folded into the broader Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill, which expires September 30, 2026. “That’s probably the most obvious place to place it,” Wolf said.
If passed, it could significantly speed up deployment timelines by providing clarity that the present regulatory framework lacks.
What This Means for Fleets (and Consumers)
For fleet operators, the near-term outlook for autonomy is less about technology readiness and more about how quickly key policy barriers are resolved.
On the trucking side, Wolf said the long-standing warning triangle requirement is prone to be addressed, clearing the way in which for broader scaling.
Yet, in the larger picture — and despite energetic negotiations — advancing the Self-Drive Act within the near term stays uncertain, especially if it fails to connect to the upcoming surface transportation bill.
If those pieces fall into place, autonomous trucking could move quickly from limited pilots to scaled operations.
For fleets weighing adoption, one commonly cited concern — liability — could also be less of a barrier than assumed. As Wolf noted, removing the human driver simplifies the equation, shifting responsibility more cleanly toward product liability and system performance.
In that environment, fleets are prone to see a hybrid model take hold first, with autonomous trucks handling long-haul, hub-to-hub routes, and human drivers managing first- and last-mile delivery.
A much larger hybrid model can even live on, where human drivers and autonomous vehicles share the road.
“It’s just a straightforward fact,” Wolf said. “There’s going to be a coexistence between autonomy and human-driven, CDL-driven trucks for a really very long time.”
This Article First Appeared At www.automotive-fleet.com
