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A vehicle built without a steering wheel or pedals removes the hardware that keeps a human driver in the authority chain when an autonomous system reaches its limits.
Tesla is apparently approaching a production rollout of exactly that design in the Cybercab, and the company's stock moved to the top of S&P 500 gainers as investors began pricing in that proximity.
The constraint a pedalless vehicle sets In the autonomy classification, systems at lower capability levels retain manual controls because they cannot guarantee coverage of every scenario within the vehicle's operating environment.
The steering wheel and pedals are the safety architecture: when the system hits its operational boundary, the human occupant takes over. Remove that hardware, and a different contract is signed.
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