Tesla FSD approved in Netherlands
Tesla’s new FSD Supervised system won approval in the Netherlands and has begun rolling out to customers there, with the company hinting at wider European expansion. (x.com) The rollout is being positioned as supervised autonomy trained on billions of kilometres and able to handle varied road types under driver oversight. (x.com)
Tesla can now enable Full Self-Driving Supervised in the Netherlands after the Dutch vehicle authority, RDW, issued type approval on April 10. (rdw.nl) RDW said it tested the system for more than one and a half years on a test track and on public roads before granting approval. The agency said the approval has provisional validity in the Netherlands and could later allow admission in other European Union member states. (rdw.nl) Full Self-Driving Supervised is a driver-assistance system, not a self-driving car mode, under the Dutch approval. RDW said the driver remains legally responsible, must stay in control, and is monitored by in-cabin checks on eye attention and readiness to take the wheel. (rdw.nl) Tesla describes the feature as software that can handle route navigation, steering, lane changes and parking under active driver supervision. On Tesla’s Netherlands site, the company says the system has been trained on billions of kilometres of anonymized real-world driving data from a fleet of more than six million vehicles. (tesla.com) The Dutch approval is Tesla’s first formal opening for this version of the system in Europe after months of public deadlines and regulatory back-and-forth. On March 23, RDW said Tesla and the agency were completing the final steps of an assessment process that had started about 18 months earlier. (rdw.nl) Before approval, Tesla said it had logged more than 1.6 million kilometres of testing on European roads, run more than 13,000 customer ride-alongs, and completed more than 4,500 track scenarios for the Dutch review. Those figures were published by Tesla’s Europe team in March as it pushed toward an April 10 target. (teslarati.com) RDW drew a sharp line between automation marketing and the legal status of the product. The regulator said a vehicle using Full Self-Driving Supervised “is not self-driving,” and said the system can lock out temporarily if the driver stays inattentive. (rdw.nl) Tesla had already been using the Netherlands as its European demonstration base, with public ride-along events scheduled in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Tilburg, Purmerend and Wezep between February 16 and March 31. Those events gave customers and regulators a preview before the Dutch signoff arrived. (tesla.com) What comes next is narrower than the name suggests: a supervised driver-assistance rollout in one country, under one regulator, with the driver still on the hook. But the Dutch approval gives Tesla its first European foothold for expanding the feature beyond North America, China, Australia and New Zealand. (rdw.nl)
