Overview
- Tesla changed product pages on European sites on October 10, 2026 to rename its contested system from Full Self‑Driving to Tesla Assisted Driving as a response to long‑running criticism that the old name misled drivers about system capability.
- EU technical committee for motor vehicles (TCMV) is still reviewing whether to approve the system across Europe and a final decision is not expected before December 2026; the Netherlands and several other states have granted provisional permissions while France and Sweden remain concerned.
- German Transport Minister Steffen Bilger has signaled conditional support for a Europe‑wide approval that would keep drivers legally responsible for safe driving and permit the assist to exceed speed limits by up to 10 percent under specified limits.
- Safety bodies raise sharp objections to system features called Speed Offset and Contextual Max Speed that can deliberately raise vehicle speed above posted limits, with the European Transport Safety Council warning these functions could breach UN rules and a Belgian group reporting repeated rule violations in 30 km/h and play streets.
- Regulatory debates track a deeper technical dispute over Tesla’s camera‑only approach versus competitors’ lidar/radar stacks, and the outcome could create a patchwork of national rules, affect driver expectations and shape whether extra safeguards or software changes are required before wider use.