Tesla renames ‘Full Self-Driving’ to ‘Assisted Driving’ in Europe

Tesla has renamed its Full Self-Driving feature to Tesla Assisted Driving on its European websites, in response to regulators' concerns that the previous name was misleading. CEO Elon Musk has touted the self-driving technology as crucial to the company's future growth. The change has been implemented across various European countries, including Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands, with the US site still referring to it as Full Self-Driving (Supervised).

Tesla's strategy for winning approval for the FSD in Europe has involved encouraging owners and supporters to lobby national regulators for faster approvals. However, several regulators have maintained that the old name was misleading, as the system requires constant supervision and drivers remain legally responsible. In Sweden, consumer protection authorities had asked the Swedish Transport Agency to assess whether marketing FSD could give buyers a false impression of the system's capabilities.

In Italy, authorities had expressed concerns that the name Full Self-Driving could lead users to believe that the vehicle has unsupervised automatic driving functions. While eight EU countries already allow the system, an EU-wide vote has been postponed from October to at least December.