The race to create reliable, safe, and production-ready autonomous vehicle technology is only getting hotter these days. Now, General Motors and Ford have both petitioned the NHTSA to allow each of them a special exemption in an effort to further their autonomous driving goals. If approved it would mean up to 5,000 driverless vehicles without steering wheels or pedals on public roads in the near future.

The petitions from each company are largely similar in their efforts to get approval for the autonomous vehicle deployment. Both companies are clearly confident enough in their proprietary autonomous driving systems (ADS) that they’re willing to put them on public roads at this stage. These vehicles could be approved for road testing without things like turn signals, windshield wipers, mirrors, and more.

General Motors is specifically requesting approval to deploy 2,500 of its Origin autonomous vehicles. It asserts that the Origin isn’t built with manual controls to begin with since it’s a carriage-style vehicle with the front seats facing rearward and the rear seats facing forward. That sort of layout certainly would preclude the vehicle from needing a number of features that the petition seeks to get exemption from.

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Ford doesn’t specify exactly which vehicle it plans to use as a part of the program but the petition does go as far as to say that “Ford believes having active driving controls and communications would introduce an unacceptable risk to safety.” A Ford spokesperson told Reuters that the “petition is an important step toward helping create a regulatory path that allows autonomous technologies to mature over time, eliminating controls and displays that are only useful to human drivers.”

This wouldn’t be the first time that a company asked for approval for such testing. Back in 2018, General Motors sought an exemption to test a Chevy Bolt without steering wheels or pedals. It withdrew that same proposal in 2020 when it still hadn’t been approved.

Both petitions are open for public comment over the next 30 days. How do you feel about the idea of a vehicle on the road with you that doesn’t have any manual controls? Let us know in the comments below!