California Moves to Open Roads for Heavy-Duty Autonomous Trucks with New DMV Rules

Revised DMV rules pave the way for heavy-duty driverless vehicles, balancing safety concerns with the push for innovation.

California is a state of dichotomies when it comes to autonomous vehicles. On one hand, the state boasts Silicon Valley’s leading AV innovators, like Waymo, based in Mountain View, California, and a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google. Waymo’s robotaxis roam the hilly streets of San Francisco and the palm-lined streets of Los Angeles, ferrying passengers with a friendly reminder not to mess with the steering wheel if occupants decide to sit in the driver’s seat.

What California lacks — and what is more scarce than the California grizzly bear on the state’s flag — are autonomous vehicles that weigh over 10,001 pounds. The big rigs in California remain manned, due in part to organized labor pushback. Labor groups have on multiple occasions supported legislation aimed at restricting or banning them, with at least one such bill facing a veto from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

That de facto restriction on heavy-duty autonomous vehicles may be coming to an end. The most recent development came not from the California Legislature but from the Department of Motor Vehicles, which recently completed a 15-day public comment period on revisions to rules that currently prohibit driverless big rigs.

This is part of the California DMV’s draft regulations, originally released in April 2025 with a larger 45-day public comment period. The newly closed 15-day comment period, which ended Dec. 18, 2025, incorporates adjustments based on prior feedback and includes proposed regulations for driverless testing and deployment.

A key element of these revisions is a phased permitting process similar to that for light-duty AVs and robotaxis. The process would begin with testing with a human safety driver, followed by driverless testing and finally full commercial deployment.

To get there, California is adding several requirements. One is testing mileage thresholds. Manufacturers must demonstrate “a minimum of 500,000 autonomous miles on public roads throughout the intended operational design domain” under a valid driverless testing permit, with the same out-of-state maximum (up to 400,000 miles) and in-state minimum (at least 100,000 miles in California).

This leads to a cumulative total of at least 1 million miles before heavy-duty AVs can deploy for commercial operations.

To ban or not to ban? That is the question.

To understand more about California’s thought process and why the state has been slower to adopt heavy-duty driverless rigs, FreightWaves spoke with Earl Adams Jr., former chief counsel at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and now vice president of public policy and regulatory affairs at PlusAI.

The first thing Adams noted was that calling it a ban is a strong term, given that California has led in passenger and light-duty vehicle deployment. It’s more of a bureaucratic and rulemaking process that has taken years to navigate.

“What we found in California is that they wanted to be thoughtful. They did not want to just rush like with the passenger and light-duty [vehicles]; they wanted to make sure they had the proper regulations in place. They wanted to make sure that they had the right understanding of what they needed to regulate. And so it just took time,” Adams told FreightWaves.

Adams has a unique window into the regulatory process, in part because he was in conversations with California regulators during his tenure at the FMCSA.

“When I was at FMCSA in 2021, I talked to the folks in California and they 100% knew that they were going to have to move forward with regulations for commercial vehicles. In the same way at FMCSA, our view was ‘they’re on the road, we need to make sure they’re on the road safely.’ California said the same thing. But what we’re observing is that it takes time, and so in 2024 they were ready to put forth the draft regulations,” said Adams.

Adams noted that the 2024 draft rulemaking was informed by public sessions throughout 2023 and into 2024, where the California DMV engaged stakeholders.

“I actually sent out members of my team at FMCSA to observe their public sessions back in 2023. So they were definitely looking at the issue, and when they came out with their first draft in 2024, as you would imagine, it was just that — a draft — and it included a lot of the buzzwords that we talk about, like disengagement.”

In addition to buzzwords, there were also early draft rules around vehicle disengagement tracking and reporting, and notifying the state anytime the autonomous system fails to perform as expected. By April 2025, the second draft was much more refined and included the longer public comment period.

“I give them credit: In June of this year, when they held a public hearing and took in all of the public comments — written as well as oral — in this revision that we just got at the beginning of December, it showed that the state is ready. They believe that they are ready to move forward, and they found a way to balance the need for safety, as they understand it, with the imperative of allowing these vehicles to operate on public roads in California,” said Adams.

For AV trucks, it’s all about rules and definitions

When you remove the driver from a truck, it adds extra regulatory wrinkles — something that also explains some of California’s delay compared to states like Texas, currently the hotbed of autonomous truck testing activity.

There are currently no blanket federal rules for autonomous vehicles. There are federal rules for commercial vehicles, meaning that whether there is a virtual or human driver, the same federal rules apply, along with some state-level additions like enhanced reporting and first-responder or roadside interaction policies.

This regulatory patchwork between federal agencies and states also explains the push for a unified federal autonomous vehicle framework.

“That’s kind of the point of the discussion now about having a federal framework. It is to have a specific rule that applies to autonomous vehicles that looks at the unique nuances of AVs and accounts for them in a rule that specifically applies to them. Right now, there are no specific rules for AVs. There’s just rules for commercial vehicles that meet the definition of a commercial vehicle,” Adams added.

Given the patchwork of state and federal rules and guidelines, California is in a unique position to offer its state-level perspective on autonomous vehicle regulations. California has a history of setting more aggressive standards than federal guidelines, such as its authority under the Clean Air Act to set stricter emissions standards through the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which has targeted heavy-duty truck emissions and zero-emission vehicle mandates.

To Adams, it doesn’t appear California is setting stricter standards to lead the nation here. Instead, it seems more like an evolution, with California regulators making adjustments as other states and the federal government determine their approaches to this emerging technology.

“I think they just want to be very explicit about these are the areas that we want to make sure the AV manufacturers, developers and users are following so that we can ensure the public that these vehicles, as we understand it, meet a basic safety threshold,” said Adams.

Will there be an autonomous trucking California gold rush?

Adams noted that the odds of a sudden, specific emphasis on California — like a freight gold rush — are overblown, mostly because many autonomous trucking technology companies are already based there. The real benefit is the expansion of viable lanes from parts of Texas to California and leveraging longer hauls where driverless trucks excel.

“I think the implications are that we begin to see the building out of the national AV network, and so you can then begin to see routes that are being drawn from Texas to California. So if you look at the economic imperative or idea around AVs, it’s that you’re able to move freight more efficiently and faster than you can if you have a human driver, because you obviously have to stop and there are hours-of-service rules,” said Adams.

For those looking to find out exactly when this rule would take effect, the answer is “it depends,” as California continues its rulemaking process.

“What’s going to typically happen — and this is similar across most states and at the federal government — is they’ll take the comments that they receive for this short period, they will have to review those comments, they have to incorporate any recommendations that come from the public into the new draft rule, they will then publish the final draft rule,” said Adams.

Adams adds it could take several more months before the rule is published. After publication, there is additional waiting time until the rule takes effect. For autonomous trucking companies looking to strike it big in the Golden State, it could take more time. Adams notes that even in an optimistic scenario where the rulemaking proceeds efficiently, an autonomous vehicle company would potentially be able to apply for a testing permit around the third quarter of 2026.

For Adams and PlusAI, their plans for commercial deployment of trucks equipped with their virtual driver aren’t set to begin until 2027. If the rules in California pass and allow self-driving rigs on the road, autonomous trucking technology companies will be well-positioned to take advantage.

By: Thomas Wasson, Freightwaves