Tesla has spent years insisting its robotaxis drive themselves. Now it is telling a U.S. senator something different.
In a letter to Senator Ed Markey dated March 2026, Karen Steakley, Tesla's director of public policy and business development, wrote that remote assistance operators are "authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control as the final escalation maneuver after all other available intervention actions have been exhausted." The operators can take control at up to 2 mph and remotely drive the vehicle at up to 10 mph when the system permits, according to the letter.
That is not how Waymo describes its own remote operators. Waymo's vice president of operations, Ryan McNamara, wrote in a separate letter to Markey that Waymo's remote assistance agents "provide advice and support to the Waymo Driver but do not directly control, steer, or drive the vehicle." The distinction matters. Waymo goes out of its way to say a human never takes the wheel. Tesla just told Congress the opposite.
Six of the seven companies that responded to Markey's inquiry said the same thing as Waymo. Their remote workers offer guidance; the software decides whether to use it. Tesla alone drew the line differently.
Markey released the letters along with a report this week documenting what he called a "patchwork of safety practices across the industry, with significant variation in operator qualifications, response times, and overseas staffing, all without any federal standards governing these operations." He called on NHTSA to investigate and said he is drafting legislation.
The letter comes as Tesla operates roughly 50 robotaxis in Austin, Texas, most still requiring a human safety operator in the front seat. The vehicles have logged trips for a limited set of riders. Tesla has not disclosed how often the remote takeover function has been used, how many vehicles can be operated this way, or whether the company considers remote driving a routine or emergency-only capability.
The broader context: every major robotaxi company still relies on humans in the loop to some degree. Waymo's fleet response team handles thousands of confirmation requests per day when vehicles encounter situations they cannot resolve autonomously, and as Wired reported, roughly half of Waymo's remote assistance workers are based in the Philippines. That outsourcing is what prompted Markey to open the investigation in the first place.
But the degree of human involvement is the crux. Waymo and its competitors have built their public narratives around cars that drive themselves, with remote assistance as a background safety net. Tesla's admission suggests a different model: a human who can, in the right circumstances, simply drive the car remotely. Whether that human is a backup safety driver in disguise or a genuine escalation tool is a question neither the letter nor the report fully answers.
What is missing from all of this: any federal standard for what remote assistance must look like. There are no requirements for response time, operator training, or how often a vehicle can hand off to a human before the autonomy claim becomes questionable. The companies are writing their own definitions of what it means to be a self-driving car, and publishing those definitions only when Congress asks.
