Tesla renames FSD 'Assisted Driving' in Europe — SkimNews
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- Tesla rebranded its driver-assistance package from 'Full Self-Driving' to 'Tesla Assisted Driving' across its European websites after Germany's Federal Ministry of Transport (BMV) declared the FSD name misleading in an October 6 statement.
- Germany and Tesla agreed in September talks with Transport Minister Steffen Bilger that the system would be capped at 10% over the speed limit — a major concession versus the Netherlands-approved version, which Reuters says permits speeds up to 50% over the detected limit.
- Tesla's German 'Assisted Driving' page is a direct translation of its US FSD page with only the product name swapped, retaining claims that the system drives 'almost anywhere' with minimal intervention and is '7x safer' than US human drivers.
- Tesla lists eight EU countries where the system is currently approved — the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, Czechia and Croatia — but Germany is not yet on that list ahead of a bloc-wide vote now slipped to December.
- EU approval requires 15 of 27 member states representing 65% of the population, and France and Sweden have both already raised concerns about Tesla's speeding behavior in the approval process.
- In the US, tesla.com/fsd still sells 'Full Self-Driving (Supervised)' for $99 a month, and a California judge ruled in December that the name was 'unambiguously false and counterfactual'.
Why it matters: Tesla just agreed with a major regulator that 'Full Self-Driving' was a misleading name, then dropped the term in Europe to secure Berlin's support for an EU-wide rollout — but the company is still selling the same feature as 'Full Self-Driving (Supervised)' for $99/month to American customers, creating a transatlantic credibility gap that Tesla's own legal losses in California already underscored.
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