Tesla has quietly renamed its Full Self-Driving system to Tesla Assisted Driving across its European markets, a move that comes as the company seeks EU-wide approval for the driver-assistance technology.
Over the past week, the new name has appeared on Tesla's websites in Spain, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, among others, and the company has updated its online owner's manuals in each market to match.
The rename follows criticism from safety regulators in several European countries who said the Full Self-Driving name was misleading, Reuters has reported. Their concern is that the branding could give drivers false confidence that the car can drive itself in all scenarios, leaving them paying less attention to the road.
Tesla has long labelled the system Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and repeatedly warned customers on its websites and social channels that the technology does not make vehicles fully autonomous or replace a human driver. The new name addresses that ambiguity at a stroke, which is presumably the point: it is a fast, cheap fix for one of the main objections regulators have raised, at a moment when Tesla needs those regulators on side.
The path to EU-wide approval
The name change comes roughly six months after the Dutch regulator RDW approved the Full Self-Driving system following months of testing conducted away from public view. In the months since, seven other EU countries have cleared the driver-assistance functions for local fleets: Croatia, Slovenia, Czechia, Estonia, Lithuania, Denmark and Belgium. Slovakia is expected to follow soon.
A vote on rolling the system out across the whole bloc was scheduled for this month but has been pushed back to December. For approval, a qualified majority is needed, meaning 15 of the EU's 27 member states must vote in favour.
Elon Musk has been pushing hard for EU-wide approval, describing the system as a crucial part of Tesla's future. That context makes the rebrand look less like a courtesy to European drivers and more like groundwork for the December vote: if regulators in several countries have already flagged the name as misleading, cleaning it up before they cast ballots is an obvious move.
What the system actually does
Full Self-Driving, now Assisted Driving, is one of the most complex driver-assistance systems on the market, but it does not offer full self-driving in all scenarios, nor can drivers switch it off and stop paying attention behind the wheel.
Tesla has not announced whether the rename affects pricing or availability outside Europe, and it has not said whether the Assisted Driving name will spread to other markets.
