Tesla's FSD Supervised just got its first European green light. The Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted type approval after testing for over 18 months on tracks and public roads. It's classified as a driver assistance system, not full autonomy. Drivers have to stay alert and ready to take over. The system uses cabin cameras to track eye contact and hand position, and it'll warn you or even shut itself off if you stop paying attention.
The EU version required real changes.
Speed is capped at 130 km/h. The system is geofenced to approved road types. Tesla had to recalibrate traffic sign recognition for Europe's mix of sign colors, shapes, and languages. Roundabouts are far more common, so the software needed better handling. GDPR also means Tesla can't collect and beam as much data back to its servers compared to what it pulls from US drivers.
BMW and Ford already have similar EU approvals for their own driver assistance systems. Tesla's arrival matters more because of its scale and its aggressive push toward autonomous driving.
But the "supervised" label is doing a lot of work here. As Hacker News commenters pointed out, asking humans to stay attentive while a car mostly drives itself is psychologically hard. People zone out. Whether Tesla's enhanced driver monitoring can actually prevent that is still an open question.