Brussels. The dispute over Tesla's autopilot system FSD is expanding. Shortly before further EU consultations, the fundamental question has long been about how Europe should deal with the new automated systems.
The origin and starting point of the discussion is Tesla's driving assistance system “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)”. The technology allows the driver to temporarily take their hands off the steering wheel while the vehicle steers, brakes and accelerates independently. European and Asian manufacturers already have similar systems on the road in Europe, but only use them on highways. Tesla's FSD, on the other hand, also works in cities and overall offers an unusually wide range of functions, some of which go beyond the existing EU requirements.
The non-profit European Transport Safety Council ETSC is now criticizing at least two of the functions and is calling on the EU Commission and member states not to approve them in their current form. One of them clearly violates existing UN rules. However, the current dispute is only part of what has become a fundamental debate about the safety, approval and control of extensive driving assistance systems in Europe.
Specifically, the ETSC criticizes the “Speed Offset” function. According to the Tesla manual, it allows the driver to set a permanent increase of up to 50 percent to the maximum speed recognized by the system. For example, 50 km/h can become 75 km/h.
According to the ETSC, this contradicts the UN regulations for so-called Driver Control Assistance Systems (DCAS). This expressly prohibits a default setting that causes the maximum system speed to exceed the speed limit. According to the Road Safety Council, Tesla did not list this function among the points for which an exemption from existing regulations was requested.
The organization is also critical of the “Contextual Max Speed” function. When choosing the speed, it can take into account, among other things, how fast other road users are traveling. The ETSC considers environmental information to be useful in principle, but warns against using the speed of other cars as a guide: If they drive too fast, the system could also derive a higher speed from this.
The current criticism hits an already controversial approval history. The Dutch vehicle and registration authority RDW initially approved Tesla technology for the Netherlands in April on the basis of an exception in the European type approval regulation. It allows the introduction of new technologies that do not fully fit into the existing regulations, provided that at least an equivalent level of safety is demonstrated. Other Member States may adopt such provisional authorisation.
It is precisely this procedure that is met with criticism from security experts. The ETSC, whose members also include Dekra and TÜV as well as the ARCD automobile club, criticizes that a regulation originally intended for technical exceptions could actually pave the way for a fundamental expansion of automated driving functions.
Tesla's FSD can, among other things, steer, accelerate, brake and initiate driving maneuvers independently under the driver's supervision - even off highways. According to the organization, EU-wide approval could therefore have a precedent for other manufacturers and for the future design of the international regulations for automated driving.
The Dutch licensing authority defends its decision with extensive tests. After approval, the authority also tightened the required monitoring and has monthly reports. In mid-June, according to the RDW, almost 40,000 appropriately equipped vehicles had driven around 24 million kilometers in the Netherlands without any incidents classified as relevant by the authority.
That's not enough for the ETSC. He criticizes the fact that there is no institution at EU level comparable to US authorities such as the NTSB and NHTSA that systematically records and independently investigates accidents involving driver assistance and automated driving systems. Ultimately, a software error could affect not just a single vehicle, but potentially an entire fleet with the same software version.
Tesla, in turn, has been aggressively pushing forward the European introduction for some time. For example, at the end of 2025, the company had already called on its customers to comment positively on the approval process to the Dutch RDW. The authority then publicly asked people to refrain from making such contacts.
This means that the upcoming European decision is about more than the release of Tesla software. Also up for debate is how far assistance systems are allowed to drive independently, how their safety must be proven and who checks them after approval.
The issue will be discussed again in the EU's Technical Committee for Motor Vehicles at the beginning of October. A vote on EU-wide approval is not expected until December at the earliest. How that turns out is unclear. The seven countries that have so far adopted the Dutch approval only have around twelve percent of the votes needed for an EU-wide approval. Major markets such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain have not yet joined. France and Sweden have recently expressed concerns about how to deal with speed limits.
