Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, still in Lumis, quick shout out to my newest patron Dan. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. This did not take long, but members of Trump's team have told advisors they plan to make a federal framework for fully self-driving vehicles one of the transportation department's priorities. Current federal rules pose significant roadblocks for companies looking to deploy vehicles without wheels or pedals and large quantities, which of course Tesla plans to do. And the Trump team is now looking for policy leaders for the department to develop this framework to regulate self-driving vehicles.
The transportation department, through NHTSA, can issue rules that would make it easier to run autonomous vehicles, but inactive Congress would clear the way for mass adoption of self-driving cars. A bipartisan legislative measure being discussed in early stages would create federal rules around AVs. One person under consideration for the Transportation Secretary is Emile Michael, a former Uber executive. While at Uber, Emile actually led some acquisitions that resulted in the creation of Uber's Autonomous Tech Group, and it was that group that was later sold to Aurora Innovation as Uber chose to focus on its core ride-hailing business. And so far, Emile has been the one overseeing the Trump transition team's automated driving policy work.
And I'm guessing it doesn't hurt that Emile has also previously invested in SpaceX. There are some other names being considered, but the word is we should hear a decision by the end of this week. I continue to say that this is a big deal for Tesla, but I'm still seeing plenty of people saying things like, Do you really think it's the regulations that are holding back Tesla's FSD progress? And to that, I would just say, well, so far, no, but that doesn't mean that they won't here in the near future. So let me just quickly try to drive this point home in a different way.
Let's just go through the process of getting an AV permit in California. For starters, there are two different types of permits. You have a testing permit and the deployment permit. For the testing permit alone, you have some manufacturer requirements. You have to register with the California DMV to get that testing permit, and the company applying for the permit has to provide proof of insurance. All AVs must be equipped with a data recorder that captures and stores autonomous tech data for at least 30 seconds before a collision. All of the test drivers have to complete a training program, and manufacturers must report any accidents involving their test vehicles within 10 days.
They're required to submit annual disengagement reports detailing any instances when the AV technology disengaged during testing. Then you can move on to the deployment permit. It's at this point a company like Tesla would have to provide a law enforcement interaction plan as well as a consumer education plan. The vehicles then go through a testing process to ensure that they comply with the current industry standards for cybersecurity. The manufacturers have to conduct extensive testing, including simulations and controlled environment testing before even applying for this deployment permit.
Then the manufacturers have to put together a lengthy report where they specify the operational design domain of the vehicles, things like road types, speed limits, and weather conditions under which the AVs can operate. And then only after those steps are done can a company submit an application to the California DMV with all of the required documentation. And of course the timeline for all of this will vary based on many factors, but generally speaking it can take from several months to over a year from initial application to approval. So bear in mind that's just a high level overview of what would be required for a company like Tesla in one state. Before going any further we have to acknowledge there is a chance that this federal framework fails to come to fruition.
That's because during Trump's first term there was actually an attempt to pass some federal legislation to regulate AVs but it ultimately failed. The bill passed the House of Representatives easily but it ran into a bunch of trouble in the Senate. And at the time here were the main arguments against that bill. Some senators and consumer advocacy groups were worried about the safety of deploying a large number of AVs without sufficient testing and safeguards. At the beginning of Biden's term there was actually an attempt to merge that bill with other legislation but that failed when some manufacturers tried to include a language that would prevent consumers from suing or forming class action cases.
And as we've talked about a few times in the past, NHTSA right now allows manufacturers to deploy 2,500 self-driving vehicles per year under a granted exemption. With the bill they were trying to pass before they were asking for as many as 100,000 AVs per year but there was no consensus agreement on the appropriate scale and pace of this AV rollout. In case you want to look up the bill on your own it was the AV start act and it was denied in the Senate in December of 2018. And from what I could find most of the concerns at the time were raised primarily by Senate Democrats.
And one of the main questions they had at the time that will definitely be brought up this time as well is the federal preemption of state laws and how that's going to work. Even Gene Munster who has definitely been skeptical of Tesla at times to say the lease said the likely loss of the $7,500 AV tax credit is chump change when you compare it to Tesla capitalizing on its autonomous future. That future took a large step forward with Trump's transition team planning to make regulating self-driving vehicles a top priority. And he called this a massive opportunity.
And people don't talk about things like this much but there have been Wall Street analysts that have said things like certain states may actually require that to get these robot taxi licenses you have to actually have LIDAR on board. Which of course would be a problem for Tesla. It should go without saying but Elon doesn't have the time to work with every state to go over the details of how this regulation should work. However if there was federal legislation it would be a one and done type opportunity for Elon to have a significant impact on those regulations.
So just keep in mind we still have plenty of questions about this. There's no guarantee this legislation ever gets passed. But to hear that it's a priority for the Trump team and it's something they're already working on rather than just something we were hoping to see is a huge step forward the way I see it. California loves regulation. But they have a pathway. Yeah I mean there's a pathway obviously Waymo operates in California so there's just a lot of forms about a lot of approvals that are required. I mean I'd be shocked if we don't get approval next year but it's just not something we totally control. But I think we will get approval next year in California and Texas and towards the end of the year it will branch out beyond California to Texas.
I mean I think it's important to reiterate this like all of you that are fighting a vehicle at the federal level in the US is done by meeting FOVSS regulations. All our vehicles today that are produced that are autonomous capable meet all those regulations the cybercatalymp of regulations and so the deployment of the vehicle to the road is not a limitation but is a limitation is what you said at the state level where they control autonomous vehicle deployment some states are relatively easy as you mentioned for Texas. And so other ones have had place like California that may take a little longer. Other ones hadn't set up anything yet and so we will work in those state by state and get the.
I do think we should have a federal. I agree that like autonomous vehicles should be approved. There should be possible to. A counter is if you're listening let's get a federal ABA. There should be a federal federal approval process for autonomous vehicles. I mean that's how the FMBSS is. It started to work. Federal motor vehicle. The F&F and FMBSS is federal.
Yeah so I mean in 2017 and 18 that we. You know so when the regulators started looking at it and it's really kind of stalled since then but we would appreciate and would support helping out with those. It really needs to be not at like a national rule is important. You know if there's a Department of Governor efficiency I'll try to help make that happen. I did it for everyone. It just has like this. But you know just we like some some things in the US are state by state regulated like for example insurance and it's like it's incredibly painful to do it state by state for 50 states and I think we should have this should be a national approval process for autonomy.
As Elon said on the call having states control AV deployment just leaves a lot more that's outside of Tesla's control. So clearly moving this to the federal level would reduce the number of things that are outside of Tesla's control significantly. And of course this would be great news for the entire autonomous industry but as we know there's only one company that this would be a major accelerant for and that's Tesla.
Reason being they're the only company that already has a fleet of millions of vehicles on the roads that may be capable of unsupervised FSD and they also have the production capacity to make millions of these AVs every year profitably. I think there's a realistic chance it would take three to five years for Tesla to get autonomous approval in all 50 states as there's likely to be at least a few laggards in a few states where the leadership is adversarial toward Elon or toward Tesla or they're just not composed of forward thinkers. We also might get an increase in the deployment cap of 2500 AVs per year or the cap may be removed altogether. And as mentioned Elon is likely going to have significant input on how this federal legislation is written and there's no one else I'd rather have in that role. Someone intimately familiar with autonomous tech who put safety first and understands the value of proper regulation but also understands the pitfalls of over regulation. And all of this is part of why this federal regulation could be such a game changer for Tesla.
There was some sentiment on X from people like PD and Naomi that the Model X is simply not big enough for certain families. Naomi said we need big Teslas for big families to which Elon said okay and then Rabbi Litvin said now please make a Tesla big enough for my family to which Elon said the Tesla Robovin the Robovin is in development some other things too. I know many people would love to see a proper three row SUV from Tesla something like a suburban or a Tahoe or a Rivian R1s. So what about something like a cyber SUV instead of having the volt you can just remove that and have a third row still with plenty of storage. When it comes to what these other things could be your guess is as good as mine.
On the Tesla configurator you can now lease an entry level Model 3 and Model Y with the same down payment for the exact same amount excluding gas savings of $299 per month. That's with 3000 down for 36 months and 10,000 miles. Heading over to the Model Y you see the exact same numbers and the same starting lease price. As we all know by now the main problem that Tesla has with its leases is they don't allow customers to buy out the vehicle at the end of the lease. In my opinion until Tesla does that which by the way I don't think they're going to do I don't think Tesla's lease rates will ever be significant. A big question was anybody able to secure the Tesla bot action figure for $40 when it went on sale yesterday. It is currently out of stock.
Sawyer shared this if you missed it it looks like for the 2025 version of the Model Y the rear camera design gets a bit of an upgrade with the actual housing for the camera being a bit more pronounced. It's tough to tell from this angle how far the new housing actually comes out relative to the surface of the camera but it's clearly more pronounced than the outgoing model year design. The zero emission transportation association which represents some major automakers has been urging Trump not to kill the tax credits for EV sales and production. The members of this group include LG, Tesla, Uber, Lucid and Panasonic but it's clear that the group does not speak on behalf of all of its members because Tesla has reportedly come out and said they're in support of removing the tax credits. The group said the production tax credits have driven enormous job gains in states like Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Georgia and mourned killing those production and consumer tax credits would undercut those investments and hurt American job growth. And the director of Zeta said the tax credits are critical to actually compete and win against China.
The next few months really are shaping up to be quite interesting from a policy perspective. Tesla stock closed the day at $338.74 up 5.62% while the Nasdaq was up 0.6%. The volume today was 27% higher than the average. A heads up my schedule is pretty crazy right now just know I'm doing my best to balance family and work in this very unique season of life. And over the next two weeks we'll be traveling for a wedding and then packing, cleaning and heading back home. The good news is after the week of Thanksgiving things should be back to normal from a schedule perspective for electrified but until then it's looking like there will only be a few more uploads at best. So thank you all ahead of time for understanding. Hope you guys have a wonderful day. Please like the video if you did you can find me on X-linked below and a huge thank you to all of my Patreon supporters.