By Toby Sterling and Abhirup Roy
AMSTERDAM/SAN FRANCISCO, April 10 (Reuters) – Tesla on Friday said Dutch regulators had approved the use of its driver assistance software which handles most driving tasks on highways and city streets under human supervision, the first regulatory sign‑off for the technology in Europe.
Approval from the Dutch vehicle authority for the technology, called Full Self‑Driving Supervised, could help pave the way for acceptance by other European authorities.
“FSD Supervised has been approved in the Netherlands and will begin rolling out in the country shortly,” Tesla said in a post on social media platform X. “We’re excited to bring FSD Supervised to more European countries soon.”
Wider adoption of FSD is central to Tesla’s growth strategy. Much of the company’s valuation hinges on Chief Executive Elon Musk’s bet that artificial‑intelligence-driven self‑driving software and robotaxis will become a major revenue stream.
The software is already available as a subscription to drivers in the U.S., where it also faces consumer lawsuits and federal investigations after crashes and reports of traffic violations.
Many companies are working on self-driving systems – most use several hardware sensors to track the driving environment. Instead Tesla relies primarily on cameras and AI.
Tesla is counting on self-driving software to boost sales, which have slowed in Europe where its EV lineup is aging and Musk’s far‑right political rhetoric has had a negative impact.
(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco and Toby Sterling and Bart Meijer in Amsterdam; Editing by David Gregorio)
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