Tesla Thinks Full Self-Driving Is Ready For Europe. Regulators Say Not So Fast

• Tesla has released the second video showing hands-free Full Self-Driving in a major European city.
• After Paris, Tesla has now released a time-lapse of a car running FSD in Rome, a city known to be difficult to drive in.
• The prolonged wait for EU regulatory approval was deemed “very frustrating” by Elon Musk.

Tesla has released a video showing a vehicle equipped with Full Self-Driving (FSD) going around the crowded and hectic streets of Rome. It’s the second in a series of videos meant to illustrate the fact that the manufacturer thinks FSD is ready for its European debut, hinting that only the wait for regulatory approval is holding it back.

The first video of FSD running hands-off in Europe shows the system working in Paris, specifically around the Arc de Triomphe, which is a massive roundabout with no lane demarcations and 12 busy roads feeding into it—it can be a very stressful place for human drivers. The Tesla successfully navigated the roundabout as if trying to prove a point that it’s ready for the worst traffic situations that Europe has to offer.

The choice of Rome in the more recent video is also not random. The Italian capital is known for its challenging traffic full of aggressive drivers, swarming scooters, sometimes narrow streets paved with cobblestones and just a lot of hustle and bustle. Driving around Rome can be challenging even for experienced drivers, so it will be interesting to see what happens in places like Rome once FSD is allowed for use on public roads.

CEO Elon Musk expressed his frustration that it’s taking longer than he would have liked, putting the blame for the delay on “Dutch authorities” and the need for “the EU to approve.” He went on to say that it’s “very frustrating” that they’re not expediting the process because, at least according to Tesla’s own internal statistics, having FSD drive cuts the risk of injury fourfold. That internal data claims that FSD is 10 times less likely to get into a crash than a human driver.

The process behind obtaining regulatory approval is complex and takes longer in the EU than in the U.S., partly because of the different legal frameworks around fully hands-off automated driving assistance systems. Who’s at fault in a self-driving car crash needs to be more clearly defined in Europe, where currently only Level 2 semi-autonomous driving systems are permitted.

Some cars also have an automatic lane change feature, but you can’t keep your hands off the wheel for more than a few seconds at a time.

Mercedes-Benz is the first manufacturer allowed to enable Level 3 automated driving in the EU. The driver can take their hands off the wheel in Mercedes vehicles equipped with Drive Pilot at speeds of up to 59 mph (95 km/h), but only on the (vast) German autobahn network.

In the press release announcing the milestone, Mercedes explained the importance of “redundant system architecture for safety.” This basically means that steering, braking, and other important functions have a double circuit to allow them to keep going if one fails.

Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot Turquoise Lights

Photo by: Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes also notes that Lidar is essential to make Level 3 driving possible. We don’t know if this particular detail also includes feedback from the regulators themselves, who like the idea that self-driving cars have other ways to make sense of their environment other than cameras.

Teslas don’t have Lidar or radar and rely on their camera array (and several neural networks running on supercomputers) to understand what’s going on around and how to react.

Regulators haven’t weighed in publicly, so we don’t know how far along the process is. The fact that Mercedes was only allowed to enable L3 on the highway and at a considerably lower speed than what most people do on the autobahn hints that making FSD legal in Europe won’t be easy or quick.

Tesla’s European arm operates through the Netherlands, where it has its continental headquarters. It uses the Netherlands Vehicle Authority (RDW) to homologate its models for sale in the EU, and it’s this institution that’s responsible for testing and sending its findings to the EU for approval.

In the U.S., Tesla simply rolled out FSD as a public beta that allowed users to activate the system and take their hands off the wheel on pretty much any road. This would be impossible in Europe, where regulators and lawmakers want to see testing data and proof that it’s safe before they grant approval.

Ultimately, uploading videos won’t speed things up. The combination of the fact that FSD has almost exclusively been tested in the U.S., its camera-only approach and the multitude of legal implications that need to be made clear first means there’s a strong chance we won’t see FSD in Europe this year.