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Autonomy

Dutch Regulator Approves Tesla’s Rename and Slower Margin

The Dutch regulator approved Tesla’s request to rename its European system “Tesla Assisted Driving” and cap its speed margin at 10 percent over the limit, from 50.

ZOETERMEER, the Netherlands, Nov. 3 — Tesla’s driver-assistance system in Europe is losing its old name, “FSD Supervised,” and the setting that let it drive half again as fast as the speed limit. The RDW, the Dutch vehicle authority that approved the system in April, said on Tuesday that it had approved changes Tesla asked for: a new name, Tesla Assisted Driving, and a speed margin capped at 10 percent over the limit, down from 50 percent.

The margin is a percentage by which the system may exceed the speed limit “if necessary for safety and traffic flow,” in the RDW’s words, and the driver sets it. On a road limited to 100 kilometers an hour, the old ceiling allowed 150 and the approved update would allow 110, by our arithmetic. The update resets the setting to 0 percent each time the car is started, and “other speed-related functions are also disabled by default,” the RDW said, without naming them. The new name goes on the in-car display, in the manual and in “all other information for the driver,” on cars with Tesla’s hardware version 4 or later. Tesla will send the changes to cars over the air, the RDW said; its notice gives no date for that.

The RDW called them “minor changes,” said it had found “no adverse or unintended effects” on how the system or the car behaves, and said the rename “does not affect how the system works”: the driver remains responsible. Its approval stands unamended, and it has told the nine member states that accepted it — Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The two changes are the ones Tesla agreed with Germany, whose transport minister, Steffen Bilger, said on Oct. 6 that he was pressing for prompt approval across the European Union. Germany will support the 10 percent limit in that process, and Tesla offered the new name to meet concerns that the old one was somewhat misleading, Reuters reported. “My goal is for Tesla drivers to be able to enjoy the benefits of ‘assisted driving’ throughout the EU without delay,” Mr. Bilger said, as quoted by Reuters. Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, thanked him on X in German. Tesla has called approval key to its sales in Europe, where it is trying to regain market share amid growing competition from Chinese electric-vehicle makers, Reuters reported.

Approval across the European Union still requires a vote by the member states in the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles, and Reuters and Electrek reported that the vote will come in December at the earliest.The VoteApproval needs a qualified majority: 15 of the 27 member states, representing at least 65 percent of the bloc’s population, Electrek reported. The RDW says the committee’s discussions are confidential.

Ten percent may not settle it. Several countries, including Sweden and France, have raised concerns about the system exceeding speed limits, Reuters reported; Sweden asked the EU in June to reject the system unless Tesla removed the ability to set speeds above the posted limit, according to Electrek. Electrek, which argues that the system does not detect speed limits properly, added a doubt of its own: “Being locked at 10% over the limit doesn’t mean much if you don’t know the actual limit.”

The safety case is disputed, too. Tesla casts the system as one that saves lives; experts who examined its methodology for Reuters said the company’s study provides no evidence of that claim. The RDW says it did not rely on Tesla’s data alone: it tested the system for more than 3,000 hours, and said in June that nearly 40,000 Teslas equipped with it had driven about 24 million kilometers in the Netherlands since April “without any relevant incidents.”

Sources

  1. RDW (Netherlands Vehicle Authority), “RDW approves changes to Tesla driver assistance system,” Nov. 3, 2026.
  2. RDW (Netherlands Vehicle Authority), “RDW explanation of European type approval Tesla with provisional validity in the Netherlands,” April 10, 2026.
  3. RDW (Netherlands Vehicle Authority), “Explanation of the type approval of FSD Supervised,” June 17, 2026.
  4. Reuters, via TimesLIVE, “Musk welcomes German backing of Tesla tech as it chases EU approval,” Oct. 8, 2026.
  5. Electrek, “Tesla cuts FSD’s speed margin from 50% to 10% over the limit in Europe,” Nov. 3, 2026.
  6. Electrek, “EU delays Tesla ‘Full Self-Driving’ vote to December at the earliest,” Sept. 25, 2026.
  7. RDW (Netherlands Vehicle Authority), “Organisational structure.”