France Opens Its Roads to Tesla FSD Testing Ahead of EU Vote

AUSTIN, Texas — France has swung open the door to Tesla's Full Self-Driving software. French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said on September 2 that Tesla provided two FSD Supervised vehicles for on-road testing in the country, following a constructive video call with Elon Musk — a step that could nudge Europe closer to bloc-wide approval of the technology.

A Notable Turnaround

The announcement marks a shift from Paris's earlier stance. In July, Tabarot had said the safety trade-offs were not yet enough to authorize FSD Supervised as it stood, citing questions around speed-limit behavior and driver attention in cities. Now, with two FSD-equipped cars in hand, France says it is entering the on-road testing stage — working with Tesla on the technical adaptations that would let it support homologation.

The two vehicles are being handed to UTAC, France's homologation body, for independent evaluation on French roads for the first time. Crucially, they are standard series cars built for the French market rather than one-off prototypes. Tesla has been refining the system in Europe for a while, an effort that recently reached a milestone when FSD Supervised arrived in European car-sharing fleets.

A Deep Testing Record

Tesla did not arrive at this moment cold. The company says it has been testing FSD in France since 2024, logging more than 200,000 kilometers on the country's roads, plus over 5,000 customer ride-along demonstrations since December 2025. Across the markets where FSD Supervised is already live — the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania — Tesla reports the fleet has driven more than 100 million supervised kilometers and is several times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving.

That safety data is central to Tesla's pitch to European regulators, and the pace of its capability gains has impressed observers, including analysts who described the latest software as a genuine step-change in Full Self-Driving. France now wants to verify that record on its own roads and urban layouts.

The Road to an EU Decision

The stakes reach well beyond France. The EU Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles could take up FSD Supervised as soon as October 6, with a follow-up opportunity in early December. Approval requires a qualified majority — at least 15 member states representing 65% of the EU population — before the system can unlock across the bloc. French officials are aiming to complete their evaluation by mid-to-late September so Paris can be ready to vote.

Momentum appears to be building. Sweden has restated its ambition for union-wide approval, and several countries have already cleared FSD Supervised on a provisional basis. Full details on Tesla's driver-assistance suite are available on the company's Full Self-Driving page.

For Tesla, France's about-face is a meaningful vote of confidence in a market that had been holding out — and one more piece falling into place as the company works toward putting supervised autonomy on roads across Europe.