France begins testing Tesla’s self-driving tech ahead of EU vote

France has started testing Tesla's ↗ 4.23% Full Self-Driving system on two vehicles, marking a reversal from the country's opposition to the technology just weeks ago and setting the stage for a potential EU-wide approval vote as early as October.

From Opposition to On-Road Testing

French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot announced on Tuesday that the country had entered "a new phase: that of on-road testing" after what he described as "a constructive exchange" with Elon Musk, according to Reuters. The shift comes less than six weeks after Tabarot said in July that the system's safety protections around speed limits and driver attention warnings were "not sufficient to justify authorization" in its current form.reuters+1

France plans to conduct independent tests to verify data from the Netherlands and Tesla, and to evaluate FSD on French roads, according to a transport ministry source cited by Investing.com. The country aims to complete testing by mid-to-late September ahead of a bloc-wide vote. The European Commission's Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles is expected to vote on EU-wide approval on Oct. 6, according to TheStreet. Passage requires member states representing 55% of the bloc's countries and 65% of its population.investing+1

Tesla's Data Play and Swedish Pushback

Tesla has already secured provisional FSD approval in five EU countries — the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, and Lithuania. This week, the company published an open-source safety dashboard featuring data it had previously shared only with regulators. The dashboard draws on more than 100 million kilometers of driving data accumulated between April and August, claiming FSD-equipped vehicles recorded 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas, according to Reuters.thestreet+2

Not all member states are persuaded. Sweden's Transport Administration sent a letter to the EU technical committee recommending a vote against FSD approval unless the system's ability to exceed posted speed limits is removed, Reuters reported. Sweden's other transport regulator, the Swedish Transport Agency, said it is still "assessing the matter to establish a Swedish position".thestreet

Fatal Crashes Cast a Shadow

The push for European approval coincides with renewed scrutiny of Tesla's driver-assistance systems in the United States. Electrek matched two fatal U.S. freeway crashes — one in Florida in October 2025 and another in Arizona the same month — to redacted Tesla reports showing a driver-assistance system was verified as engaged while the vehicles were stopped at 0 mph in live lanes, as reported by The Next Web and TechRadar. Key details, including the software version and crash narratives, were withheld by Tesla as confidential business information, making it impossible to determine whether Autopilot or FSD was active. The NHTSA is currently investigating how Tesla reports crashes involving its Level 2 systems.thenextweb+1