The famous supervised autonomous driving system of Tesla (FSD) has crossed the Atlantic and is already preparing to circulate on European roads. However, the strategy does not seem to be going as well as the company would have liked, since it has run into regulators again. In this case, Sweden and its speed limits. Below these lines we tell you all the details.
Arrival in Europe. It all started last April, when the Dutch traffic authority (RDW) approved the use of FSD in the Netherlandsbecoming the first European country to give the green light to the system. Since then, Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania and Estonia have followed suit with national approvals of their own. Tesla needed to gain traction in this way in its first European countries and that is what it has done. Now the next step is to obtain approval valid for the entire European bloc.
And that’s more complicated than it seems. For FSD to circulate legally throughout the EU, the Technical Committee for Motor Vehicles (TCMV) you should vote for it with a qualified majority, with at least 15 of the 27 member states representing 65% of the community population. The committee is scheduled to meet June 30 to discuss the matter before a formal vote.
Speed limit. FSD includes a function called “Speed Offset” that allows the driver to set a margin above the legal speed limit, so that the system itself drives exceeding that limit. In the United States, Tesla offered this under names like ‘Sloth’ or ‘Mad Max’. In Europe, those profiles have disappearedbut the possibility of exceeding the limit is still there under another name.
Who says no, and why. The Swedish Transport Administration (TRV) sent a letter to the TCMV in April recommending voting against the FSD expansion if Tesla does not remove that feature. According to the document, obtained by Reuters“allowing automated systems to systematically exceed legal speed limits poses risks that undermine both the legal framework and the expected benefits of vehicle automation.” Finland and Norway have also been skeptical of the introduction of the system in their countries, although they have not yet formalized their position before the committee.
What Tesla answers. The company has not commented publicly on the matter, but its user manual points out that drivers should not rely solely on the system to comply with speed limits and that they should drive “at a safe speed based on traffic and road conditions.” Their implicit argument is that FSD is a supervised system, as the driver remains responsible and can take control at any time. For Estonia, this reasoning has been sufficient to approve the system at the national levelalthough the country has not yet defined its vote in the TCMV.
There is more at stake than speed. Various regulators have questioned also the performance of the system in extreme conditions with heavy snow (something common in Nordic countries) and the name “Full Self-Driving” itself, which could be misleading about the real level of autonomy of the vehicle. In fact, the European version already shows “FSD (Supervised)” on the screen instead of the full name, precisely to reduce that ambiguity.
Additionally, Reuters public A few days ago, Tesla reportedly presented questionable safety data to European regulators, including the claim that FSD could have “saved 32,000 lives,” something that has not caught on, at least according to share Electrek.
What is at stake Tesla. Tesla sales in Europe have plummeted significantly since 2025partly due to the impact of Elon Musk’s fleeting political activity, and the flood of new Chinese brands that have disrupted the sector. In fact, BYD has been outperforming him in registrations for several consecutive months. Tesla needs new arguments to regain ground, and FSD was one of them. Musk even publicly predicted that It would be available throughout the EU this summer. At the moment it seems difficult to achieve.
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