Credit: Windell Oskay from Sunnyvale, CA, USA Tesla has renamed Full Self-Driving to Tesla Assisted Driving across its European websites, days after Germany said the old name was misleading. The page under the new name is unchanged, and the real obstacle to EU approval is speed rather than branding. Tesla has stopped calling its driver-assistance software Full Self-Driving in Europe. The feature is now Tesla Assisted Driving on its European sites.
The US site still sells Full Self-Driving (Supervised) for $99 a month. The change appeared on pages for Slovakia, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, Reuters reported. It follows Germany saying on Tuesday that Tesla had offered the new name. Berlin’s transport ministry considers the old name misleading, because the system never takes over the driving task.
Transport minister Steffen Bilger said he would push for fast EU-wide approval in return. Only the name changed. Electrek, which read the new German page, found it is a translation of the American one with the words swapped. It still says the car will drive almost anywhere under supervision, still carries the claim the system is seven times safer, and still promotes Robotaxi and Cybercab.
Independent researchers called that figure invalid in June. Speed is the real obstacle. Germany wants the system held to 10% above the posted limit, and Reuters has reported that the version the Dutch approved permits up to 50% over the detected one. Tesla has not said whether it will change the software.
France and Sweden have both raised concerns about speeding. Other regulators were blunter about the name. Italian officials wrote internally that it could lead users to believe the car had unsupervised automation at SAE Level 3, in correspondence Reuters obtained through freedom-of-information requests. Sweden’s consumer protection authorities asked the national transport agency to assess whether the marketing gave buyers a false impression.
A Norwegian owner asked his roads administration in September what Tesla or Norway still had to deliver. That owner was not acting alone. Reuters reported this week that Tesla encouraged owners and supporters to lobby national regulators for faster approvals. Eight EU countries now allow the system, up from the six we counted a month ago, after Czechia and Croatia recognised the Dutch certificate.
Slovak transport minister Jozef Ráž says his country will be ninth within days. The bloc-wide decision keeps slipping. The committee due to vote on 6 October did not, December is now the earliest, and France, Germany, Italy and Spain have yet to authorise the system. Germany has been here before.
Munich judges barred Tesla from advertising the “full potential for autonomous driving” in 2020, and the company kept the old name everywhere else until this week. Also tagged with
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