Post-May 2026 FSD/robotaxi tape: Q2 call + Update, NHTSA EA26002 July IR (still open), Nevada AVNC approval, China DMS recall; door-handle left off autonomy pages.

Autoresearch: Tesla FSD / robotaxi July–August 2026 tape

Generated by /autoresearch on 2026-08-24. Synthesized across 3 rounds from 11 successful fetches plus Grokipedia anchors, scoped to vault/threads/autonomous-driving. See Provenance. Treat as raw material — review before promoting into a project or thread. Context: vault/threads/autonomous-driving

Summary

The thread's last research source was April 2026; this pass updates the July–August tape from fetched primaries. Tesla's Q2 Update lists robotaxi in seven US metros, with Texas and Florida "Ramping Unsupervised," Phoenix and Las Vegas "Preparations Underway," and the Bay Area still FSD (Supervised) under CA TCP # TCP0046782 – A (Q2 2026 Update). Ashok Elluswamy, on the 22 July call, claimed 380,000 unsupervised miles / six cities / two states / "zero notable incidents" and said the robotaxi fleet is already on early FSD v15 (~40% of seven planned tracks merged) (Fool transcript). Treat those as first-party safety claims — they sit against the vault's existing Koopman / community-tracker critique. The later official NHTSA action on EA26002 is a 2 July 2026 information request (response due 12 August 2026); no fetched close-resume or recall (EA26002-01 IR). Nevada's Transportation Authority unanimously approved Tesla Robotaxi, LLC as an AVNC on 20 August 2026 for up to 5,000 fully autonomous vehicles in Clark County in the first 12 months, subject to inspections/insurance/rates and a 120-day commence-ops clock (Nevada DBI press release). China's same-day SAMR filing includes a 2,740,642-vehicle driver-attention recall that does bear on ADAS supervision; the door-handle recall does not (SAMR).

Findings

Q2 2026 FSD / robotaxi commentary (company primaries)

The furnished Q2 Update (HTML Ex. 99.1) is the operating print (SEC):

Active FSD subscriptions 1.48M (+56% YoY); footnote: active driver supervision required; does not make the vehicle autonomous.
FSD v14 Lite began delivering to US and South Korea (July) on AI3; distills AI4 v14 behavior onto AI3 camera/compute; destination options and improved merges/pedestrians/lights/cut-ins.
Robotaxi coverage table: SF Bay Area = Safety Driver / FSD (Supervised) under CA TCP # TCP0046782 – A; Austin / Dallas / Houston / Miami / Orlando / Tampa = Ramping Unsupervised; Phoenix / Las Vegas = Preparations Underway.
Cybercab started production; public-road engineering test drives in the quarter; employee campus rides at Gigafactory Texas in July.
Unsupervised area expanded in Austin; unsupervised rides launched in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.

AP, reporting the same print, recorded ~1.5M FSD subscribers, robotaxi in seven metros, Cybercab production started, and Musk's caution that the company "need[s] to be cautious about causing any accidents" (AP, 22 Jul 2026). AP's 480,216 delivery figure is off by 90 versus the deliveries 8-K (use 480,126) — not load-bearing for this thread.

On the 22 July call (Fool reprint):

Elluswamy (prepared): "The robotaxi program has been operating extremely well. Especially in terms of safety, the program has had an impeccable safety record. We have driven more than 380,000 miles of unsupervised robotaxi now across six cities in two different states. We have had zero notable incidents. Any reports have been of other actors impacting us when we were stationary."
Elluswamy: "Historically, the so-called experts have always claimed that you need LiDARs, radars, HD maps and the entire kitchen sink to drive safely. Here, we show that such is not true."
Elluswamy on v15: robotaxi fleet already running early v15; seven major improvement tracks in parallel; early builds have ~40% of those tracks merged; "as we continue to complete our work on v15, we will see that the car is going to be ridiculously safe and capable." Same v15 models "will also work on Cybercab."
Elluswamy on scale: safety monitors in passenger seats at Austin launch ~a year earlier; first fully unsupervised Austin robotaxis "around the end of last year"; unsupervised miles growing at "double-digit growth rates" every week since the beginning of 2026; time-to-new-city "trend towards zero" / operate entire states.
Musk: "If we injure even one person, it will be worldwide headline news and regulators will immediately clamp down"; Cybercab is a new chassis and needs chassis-specific miles (some Cybercabs retrofitted with wheels/pedals) before volume deployment; robotaxi constraint is the "March of 9s"; vertically integrated, no third-party rideshare distribution.
Taneja: seven US markets; fleet ramp expected to accelerate; opex up on Cybercab / Optimus / Semi / AI.
Lars Moravy: federal FMVSS movement toward purpose-built AVs; "stuff in New Jersey is a little bit disheartening"; "best regulations… provide… a goal… [not] a solution before identifying the problem."

Do not cite JPMorgan/Fremont "step-change" color from Electrek / Teslarati / NotATeslaApp — those pages were search-only, not fetched. Company v15 claims above are the fetched primary.

NHTSA EA26002 — later official action, still open

Official opening resume (INOA-EA26002-10023.pdf):

Opened 18 March 2026, prompted by PE24031.
Subject: FSD collisions in reduced roadway visibility.
Population: 3,203,754 estimated (2016–2026 S/X, 2017–2026 3, 2020–2026 Y, 2023–2026 Cybertruck with FSD).
Problem: FSD degradation-detection system fails to detect a degraded state and warn the driver in reduced visibility.
Failure-report summary: 9 incidents (SGO/media), 1 injury, 1 fatality.
Tesla Vision (cameras only) from mid-2021; Tesla began a degradation-detection update 28 June 2024, the day after the SGO report of the 28 November 2023 fatal crash. ODI did not then know deploy timing or which vehicles had the update.
Tesla's post-incident analysis: the update may have affected 3 of the 9 incidents. Tesla described data/labeling limits that ODI believes "could have led to under-reporting."
In reviewed crashes, the system did not detect impaired camera visibility and/or alert until immediately before the crash; FSD also lost track of or never detected a lead vehicle.
Six additional SGO IDs listed for further analysis.

Later official action (this is the July–August update): Information Request EA26002-01, dated 2 July 2026, to Eddie Gates (INIM-EA26002-14414.pdf). ODI is continuing the EA. It requests information on glare / fog / airborne-dust detection and alerts, the effect of FSD updates, and the nine crashes. Tesla's response due 12 August 2026. Subject system = FSD-Beta and FSD-Supervised (also "Autosteer on City Streets"). Alleged defect restated as degradation-detection failure. No fetched close-resume, recall, or mitigation order. A 24 August search of static.nhtsa.gov for a post-IR close/recall document returned only the opening resume and this IR.

PE25012 (traffic-violation PE, opened 7 October 2025) was not re-fetched as a new close/upgrade in this pass. The April wiki still stands unless a later official PE25012 action is pulled.

Nevada robotaxi permit (official state release)

The Nevada Department of Business and Industry issued a press release dated 21 August 2026 for the NTA's 20 August general session (official release):

Unanimous approval of Tesla Robotaxi, LLC, Waymo LLC, and Aviari Services, LLC as Autonomous Vehicle Network Companies under NRS/NAC 706B.
Paid passenger transportation in fully autonomous vehicles in Clark County, subject to the approved ODD.
Geographic area includes Harry Reid International Airport, but airport service requires separate Clark County Department of Aviation authorization.
Tesla: up to 5,000 fully autonomous vehicles in the first 12 months after permit issuance. Waymo and Aviari: 1,000 each.
Preconditions: vehicle-inspection documentation, insurance, rate filing, customer-app review, accessibility / nondiscrimination / receipts / reporting, crash reporting (NRS 706B.260), inspect/maintain/repair records (NRS 706B.220).
Operations must commence within 120 days after permits are issued; no public service until requirements are satisfied.
24-hour first-responder emergency contact required.
Permits issued only after NTA staff verify conditions. ODD / geofence / operating-parameter changes need prior Authority approval.
Director Kristopher Sanchez: framework is "innovation while maintaining regulatory oversight"; safety of the traveling public remains central.

RGJ (Reno Gazette Journal, 21 August) independently reported the same 20 August unanimous vote, Tesla 5,000 / Waymo 1,000 / Aviari 1,000, Clark County + airport-authorization caveat (RGJ).

Not fetched: nta.nv.gov docket PDF 26-05015_Tesla_Robotaxi_LLC_ADA.pdf (search returned "Request Rejected"). Teslarati's earlier "10-vehicle interim cap" story was search-only — do not wiki-cite the 10-car figure unless an official order is pulled. Tesla's own Q2 Update still listed Las Vegas as "Preparations Underway" as of the 22 July deck — the 20 August NTA vote is the later regulatory fact.

Nevada DMV's autonomous-vehicle page describes a self-certification testing/operations path (NRS 482A/482B) and does not itself issue the AVNC passenger-carrier permit (dmv.nv.gov). The paid-ride authority is the NTA 706B permit.

China recalls — only the DMS action belongs on this thread

Official SAMR recall-center notice, 21 August 2026 (SAMR):

S2026M0039I (Tesla Shanghai) — attach here. Immediate recall of 2,740,642 domestic Model 3 / Model Y (4 Mar 2019–7 Dec 2025). Defect: when Autosteer is on and the vehicle is in 组合 driving assistance, the existing attention-monitoring mechanism is insufficient to prompt the driver when gaze leaves the road, raising collision risk if the driver does not intervene. Remedy: free OTA adding cabin-camera monitoring on top of steering-torque; service-center path if OTA fails. This is an ADAS supervision / driver-monitoring action. It corroborates that China treats Tesla's stack as supervised L2 that still needs a watching driver — relevant to does-remote-supervised-robotaxi-qualify-as-driverless and to safety-data validity, not to the vision-only perception fork.

S2026M0098V + S2026M0099V — door / emergency handle, 2,975,910 vehicles, effective 25 Sep 2026. Interior emergency pull hard to see (color-matched trim); LV-failure-after-crash escape risk; remedy labels + OTA window-drop. Auto hardware / occupant-egress. It does not bear on unsupervised ops, NHTSA EA26002, or vision-only perception. Leave it on the stock-market tesla page. Do not force it onto vision-only-vs-sensor-fusion or is-vision-only-sufficient-for-l4-autonomy.

AP's China-recall story timed out this session — do not treat AP's extra color (industry >4M, hidden-handle ban) as fetched in this pass.

FSD v15 claims (what was actually fetched)

Fetched company claims only:

Robotaxi fleet on early v15; seven tracks; ~40% merged; "ridiculously safe and capable" still future tense (Fool).
Update: v14 Lite on AI3 in US + South Korea — a distillation of v14, not a public v15 consumer rollout (SEC Update).
No fetched consumer v15 release notes, parameter-count primary, or third-party disengagement table for v15.

JPMorgan Fremont "step-change comparable to v13→v14" / HW4-can-do-unsupervised / hold-back-Model-Y-for-Cybercab notes were search-only. Omit.

Grokipedia anchors (encyclopedic, not July tape)

Tesla Autopilot — ADAS history, Tesla Vision, contested safety-report comparisons, NHTSA scrutiny through Oct 2025. Primer only.
Tesla Robotaxi — June 2025 Austin pilot; unsupervised from January 2026; encyclopedic crash-rate color (~14 NHTSA-reported crashes / ~1 per 57,000 miles). Not used as a load-bearing July–August fact — verify against SGO/NHTSA primaries before wiki-citing those rates. Full_Self-Driving slug 404'd.

Contradictions and open questions

Elluswamy "impeccable" / 380k miles / zero notable incidents / cameras-only validation vs the vault's existing fsd-safety-data-validity (Koopman: Tesla's public report cannot support "safer than humans"; community-tracker v14.2 regression). First-party, unaudited, undefined "notable." Do not silently close the safety-data question. Flag on the concept page.
EA26002 still open. July IR is deeper investigation, not a recall and not closure. will-nhtsa-ea26002-trigger-fsd-recall stays open. Tesla response was due 12 August; no fetched Tesla response or ODI close as of 24 August.
Nevada AVNC language is "fully autonomous" paid rides vs California TCP (supervised chauffeur) vs Tesla's own Update still labeling Bay Area Supervised and Las Vegas "preparations" as of 22 July. does-remote-supervised-robotaxi-qualify-as-driverless stays open. NTA approval ≠ ops started; 120-day clock and staff verification remain.
Vision-only L4 stays open. Elluswamy asserts camera-only validation from the robotaxi record; EA26002 is still an official camera-degradation probe covering 3.2M vehicles. Those two facts coexist; do not reconcile.
China DMS recall is a regulator finding that torque-only monitoring is insufficient for combination driving assistance — it does not resolve US NHTSA files and does not belong on vision-only pages.
Door-handle recall is not an autonomy fact.
No fetched third-party v15 disengagement / crash table. Community-tracker numbers in the April source are not updated here.
nta.nv.gov official order PDF was not retrieved (blocked). Fleet-cap and ODD details rest on the DBI press release + RGJ, not the signed order.

Provenance

Rounds run: 3 of 3 (round 3 was a targeted NHTSA-docket search; no new official close/recall URL to fetch)

Sub-questions by round:

Round 1 (broad survey):

What is official NHTSA EA26002 status after April 2026?
What is the official Nevada robotaxi permit?
What did Tesla's Q2 2026 package say about FSD / robotaxi / v15?
Does the China door-handle recall bear on autonomy, or only the DMS action?

Round 2 (drill-down):

Pull the later official NHTSA EA26002 action (July IR) — targeting "opened March" as the only official page in round-1 snippets.
Pull an official Nevada state release — targeting nta.nv.gov PDF rejection.
Re-fetch SAMR for the DMS recall text after the first timeout.

Round 3 (resolve remaining uncertainty):

Is there a fetched NHTSA close-resume, recall, or Tesla IR response after the 12 August due date? — search of static.nhtsa.gov found only the opening resume + July IR. No additional fetch.

Anchor source (Grokipedia, fetched before round 1):

Tesla Autopilot — 80,017-char article; this run extracted 8,017 chars via _lib/grokipedia.py. Encyclopedic ADAS/FSD primer through ~Oct 2025. Not used for July–August tape.
Narrower: Tesla Robotaxi — 2,017 chars extracted. Encyclopedic launch history; crash-rate claims not treated as load-bearing.
~~[Failed: https://grokipedia.com/page/Full_Self-Driving]~~ — HTTP 404.

URLs fetched (11 successful HTML/PDF, 3 failed; plus two Grokipedia helper pulls):

Round 1:

Q2 2026 Update Ex. 99.1 — official — robotaxi city table, FSD subs, v14 Lite, Cybercab production.
Fool Q2 2026 transcript — transcript reprint — Elluswamy 380k / v15 / cameras-only; Musk chassis / March of 9s.
AP Q2 earnings — news — seven metros, ~1.5M FSD subs, Musk caution.
RGJ Nevada approval — news — 20 Aug unanimous NTA vote, 5,000/1,000/1,000.
Nevada DMV AV page — official — self-cert testing/ops; not the AVNC permit.
EA26002 opening resume (PDF) — official — 3.2M, 9 crashes, 1 fatality, camera-degradation theory.

Round 2:

EA26002-01 IR (PDF) — official — 2 Jul 2026, due 12 Aug, still open.
Nevada DBI / NTA press release — official — AVNC terms, 5,000 Tesla cap, 120-day clock.
SAMR recall-center notice — official (China) — DMS S2026M0039I 2,740,642 + door-handle (not an autonomy defect).
~~[Failed: https://apnews.com/article/china-car-door-recall-handles-ev-tesla-764337d890c715db7a99c032a078b417]~~ — timeout.
~~[Failed: nta.nv.gov docket PDF 26-05015]~~ — request rejected / not retrieved.

Round 3:

No additional URL fetched. Search-only confirmation that no later EA26002 close/recall PDF was indexed on static.nhtsa.gov.

Not fetched (search-only — do not wiki-cite): Electrek, Teslarati, TechCrunch, NotATeslaApp, Engadget, JPMorgan Fremont note, Reuters/Bloomberg/CNBC, Tesla IR PDFs on assets-ir.tesla.com.

Tools used: WebSearch, WebFetch, grokipedia-fetch helper (_lib/grokipedia.py), curl + Read for *.gov PDFs. Generated: 2026-08-24 13:50 UTC