After a social media pressure campaign and over a million kilometers of safe driving on European roads, Tesla FSD (Supervised) finally has its foot in the door in the EU, with the Netherlands approving its use on highways and city streets.
The approval paves the way for Tesla’s ultimate goal of having the technology become legal across Europe, as the company needed at least one European Union member state to approve it before it could be tested and approved by the entire bloc.
Last year, Tesla gave its social media followers a call to action, encouraging them to inundate the Dutch transit authority, Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer (RDW), with messages to approve Full Self-Driving testing.
The electric vehicle maker explained that it has been trying to ship supervised Full Self-Driving tech to Europe for 12 months, and the best path forward for the company is through the Netherlands.
“Our main path to success is partnering with the Dutch approval authority RDW to gain an exemption for the feature,” Tesla said in a post on X (the former Twitter).
Current EU regulations, which Tesla referred to as “outdated,” render FSD illegal in its current form. Changing the system to comply with European rules would render FSD “unsafe and unusable in many cases,” according to the company.
Tesla’s call to action on X garnered 3.7 million views, 10,000 likes, 2,300 retweets, and nearly 800 comments in just two days.
The tactic worked: RDW was flooded with comments, forcing the agency to ask the X users to chill out.
“We thank everyone who has already done so, and would like to ask everyone not to contact us about this. It takes up unnecessary time for our customer service. Moreover, this will have no influence on whether or not the planning is met,” RDW said in a statement Nov. 24.
The agency said it would make a decision by February. However, after a short delay, it has approved Tesla FSD for use in the Netherlands.
Tesla receives Dutch approval for FSD technology
Tesla FSD (Supervised) has been approved for use by Dutch regulators after 18 months of testing and more than 1.6 million kilometers driven on EU roads.
But the European version of FSD is not the same software U.S. drivers use. The RDW’s statement confirming its approval states that the software versions and functionalities in the U.S. and Europe “are therefore not comparable one-to-one.”
Some of those differences include stricter hands-on steering-wheel requirements in Europe, more limited driving mode profiles, and stricter eye-tracking requirements, among others, according to Teslerati.
Tesla is the most popular electric vehicle maker in the Netherlands, with about 100,000 Model 3s and Model Ys combined that would be eligible for FSD software, Reuters noted.
However, hopefully for Tesla, the Netherlands is just the first European domino to drop, as the RDW says it will now submit an application for authentication within the entire EU to the European Commission.
Photo by Alexander Shapovalov on Getty Images
Tesla’s best route to EU FSD approval goes through the Netherlands
European Union parliamentary rules can be complex for a manufacturer seeking to introduce a new technology in Europe for which no existing legislation currently exists.
But to receive an exemption for the market authorization, a member country must submit an application to the European Commission on behalf of the manufacturer.
The RDW of the Netherlands says it has done just that for Tesla and Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
If the European Commission approves the technology by majority vote, then the exemption is valid in all EU member states.
If there is no majority vote, the exemption would remain valid only in the Netherlands, and other member states could decide for themselves whether to adopt the tech in their countries.
Related: Tesla gets an answer for its FSD ambitions in Europe