Tesla has officially renamed its most advanced driver-assistance feature in Europe, dropping "Full Self-Driving" in favour of "Tesla Assisted Driving" (TAD) as it lobbies regulators to approve the system on public roads.
The feature's full name had already carried a qualifier — Full Self-Driving (Supervised) — and Tesla requires drivers to stay alert and ready to intervene at all times. But the name itself has been a long-running regulatory and legal irritant. On Friday, Tesla began using the new language on its European sales website.
According to a statement from the German Transport Ministry, Tesla offered to change the name. Minister Steffen Bilger had called "FSD" somewhat misleading; after discussions with the company last month, he said he would now advocate that European regulators approve the feature "as quickly as possible." The EU will likely vote on approval by the end of the year.
The rename follows years of resistance. Last year, California's Department of Motor Vehicles concluded that Tesla's use of "Full Self-Driving" and "Autopilot" was misleading and violated state law; after the agency threatened to suspend Tesla's manufacturing and dealer licences in the state, the automaker stopped using the term "Autopilot."
Tesla drivers say the system has improved substantially since its 2020 introduction, and fans post clips of trips completed without intervention. But it has also drawn scrutiny: in March, US federal authorities opened a probe after nine incidents in which FSD allegedly failed to respond to reduced visibility and did not warn drivers to take over. Tesla recalled an older version of the software in 2023 after regulators found it did not follow some traffic laws.
The company has pushed for approval in other markets for years — Australia and New Zealand approved the feature last year, the Netherlands granted provisional permission this spring, and a version reached Chinese customers in May. Approval in Europe would open a lucrative software subscription stream: Tesla currently charges $99 a month for Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in the US. This week, Reuters reported that Tesla presented misleading safety data to European regulators as it lobbied for approval — an allegation safety researchers have also levelled at the company's US statistics.
