Levels of Driving Automation is the six-level taxonomy defined by SAE International's J3016 standard — adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation — that classifies how much of the driving task a vehicle performs, from Level 0 (no automation) to Level 5 (full autonomy).
The scale's organizing question is who — or what — is doing the driving. At Level 0 the human does everything; safety features like automatic emergency braking can intervene but do not drive. Level 1 automates a single function, such as adaptive cruise control. Level 2 systems automate steering and speed simultaneously — the advanced driver assistance (ADAS) tier occupied by 📝Tesla Motors Autopilot and General Motors' Super Cruise — while the human must stay alert and ready to take over.
Level 3 marks the first real handoff: the vehicle monitors its environment and makes decisions, such as passing a slow car, though a human must remain available to intervene. Level 4 vehicles handle nearly all situations independently within geofenced operating domains — the tier of 📝Waymo's robotaxi service — and Level 5 means full autonomy anywhere, with no steering wheel or pedals required; Level 5 vehicles remain in testing. The framework is also widely borrowed outside automotive contexts as a shared vocabulary for grading machine autonomy.