U.S., China Outline Paths Toward AV Deployment

The U.S. Department of Transportation released a national strategy to accelerate the safe development and deployment of automated vehicles while reducing regulatory barriers and maintaining American leadership. The plan focuses on four priorities: improving safety standards, providing clearer and more consistent regulations, promoting domestic and international commercial use, and enabling interoperability across state lines. Federal officials also plan to modernize requirements for driverless commercial trucks, including rules governing operations, inspections, maintenance and hazardous-material transport, while accounting for the coexistence of automated and human-driven vehicles. The strategy follows other federal efforts to establish a unified national framework rather than a patchwork of state regulations, though critics noted that the announcement offered broad goals without a detailed implementation path. Separately, China announced a roadmap targeting large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles by 2030, tighter oversight of safety and production, and stronger global influence for its electric-vehicle industry.