Finland has approved the use of the Tesla Assisted Driving system on its roads. The decision by the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom allows Tesla to immediately offer the feature to its customers in the country, although final approval for the European Union has not yet been granted.
Finland is the 11th EU country to approve the system at national level. It was preceded by the Netherlands, Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Tesla Assisted Driving is the new name for the feature previously known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised). The system can automatically control steering, acceleration and braking, but it does not turn the vehicle into an autonomous car. The driver must monitor the road, observe speed limits and be ready to take control.
According to Traficom, Tesla has changed the settings related to speed and removed the reference to “full self-driving” from the name. The Finnish regulator warns that the system’s operation may be limited in snowfall, slush, when cameras are dirty or in more complex road conditions.
“We wanted to get slightly ahead of events so that drivers could use the system on our roads before the really harsh winter conditions arrive,” Jukka Juhola, a senior expert at Traficom, told Reuters.
According to him, between 8,000 and 9,000 compatible vehicles are in Finland, representing around 0.3% of the entire vehicle fleet. Most are Model 3 and Model Y vehicles equipped with HW4 hardware.
National approval does not automatically mean that Finland will support the system in an EU-wide vote. The decision must be made by the EU technical committee for motor vehicles, with the next opportunity for a vote coming in December.
Approval requires a qualified majority of 15 countries representing at least 65% of the EU’s population. The 11 countries that have granted national approval so far represent 15.52% of the bloc’s population.
Support from Germany and France will be particularly important, as the two countries together account for 33.65% of the EU’s population. Spain and Italy add another 24.13%. If the system is rejected at the European level, the national approvals already granted could be invalidated.