Legal Potholes for Tesla, Self-Driven & Driverless Cars in India

“Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation.” - Dean Kamen.

With the entry of Tesla into the Indian automotive market, the following have to be considered w.r.t to driverless regulations:

Section 2B of the Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill, 2016 to be reintroduced for parliament discussion and voting for the promotion of new-age technologies and innovations to enable all succeeding governmental actions to incorporate and regulate provisions related to driverless cars.

It is recommended that the draft bill should be created by a committee consisting of expert members from IRDA, CMVR-TSC, BIS, ICAT, ARAI, VRDE, CIRT, SIAM & ACMA [1] along with other relevant stakeholders commonly associated with automotive vehicle approvals and regulations.

Comprehensive definitions of relevant and material terms including but not limited to artificial intelligence, self and machine learning, automated driving system, driverless vehicle, autonomous driving, electric car, battery, charging station, etc. are to be drafted and incorporated under Section 2 of the proposed bill to have a detailed interpretation chapter.

Since the FDI [2] in the automotive sector is already approved at 100% through the automatic route, the following restrictions can be placed on these companies:

1. Mandatory incorporation in India.

2. Intellectual property can be transferred from its country of registration to India subject to its registration in India to prevent domestic infringement.

3. Capping and reporting requirements for repatriation of profits to its foreign holding company.

4. Minimum percentage of sourcing and distribution through Indian partners.

5. Compliance with applicable environmental requirements.

6. Compliance with applicable vehicle testing and safety requirements.

7. Absolute knowledge transfer for domestic manufacturing.

8. Training centers established to educate, establish, and increase the driving proficiency of its customers with driverless technology.

9. Data sharing memorandum of understanding with the Government of India and its respective authorities regarding disclosure of non-proprietary and material information.

10. A minimum number of permanent and contract labor employees sourced domestically.

11. Driverless options to be available only manufactured for electric cars.

12. A mandatory period of lock-in and effective period of operation.

A driverless vehicle is an electric car with onboarded intelligent driver-assisted software at different levels. The government may keep different restrictions at each level of automation:

Additional restrictions shall be including not limited to:

An automated driving system is a bot created out of code with machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities. The level of efficiency and accuracy of a bot can only be achieved the longer it is trained with further data. This data shall be trained with a knowledge bank of the following data:

1. Road, crossing, footpath, bridge, transportation network.

2. Human, animal, and environmental data.

3. Indian driving patterns and behaviors.

4. Vehicular database and schematics.

5. Active public works and repairs.

6. Weather history.

7. Geographical and topographical data in line with satellite linking.

8. Accident-prone zone data.

The above will ensure that the system is trained for the Indian context with the government and their above-mentioned expert panel to set parameters for accuracy, uptime, patches, bugs, updates, etc.

Lastly, we must emphasize that even a fully automated vehicle is not a substitute for a human being, at best it can perform driving functions as a proxy to a human being. The government has to consider the potential civil and criminal risks associated with unmanned driving and decide on factors associated with liability when it comes to damage to human life and property along with a duty of care towards the regulator, government, and society as a whole that the company should exercise.

[1] Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India, Central Motor Vehicles Rules-Technical Standing Committee, Bureau of Indian Standards, International Centre for Automotive Technology, Automotive Research Association of India, Central Institute of Road Transport, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers & Automotive Component Manufacturers Association.

[2] Foreign Direct Investment.

[3] National Highway & Traffic Safety Administration, United States of America.

[4] Matthew Roth, Regulating the Future: Autonomous Vehicles & Role of Government, 105 Iowa Law Review, 1411.

Art: "Clothed Automobiles" by Salvador Dali.