Sweden’s transport authority has told the European Union it should vote against approving Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” across the bloc unless the system’s ability to exceed posted speed limits is removed.
The recommendation, in a previously unreported April 30 letter to the EU’s Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV), lands just before the committee is due to take up the matter on June 30, ahead of an eventual vote on a bloc-wide rollout.
Sweden’s objection: a car that speeds on purpose
The Swedish Transport Administration’s complaint centers on a specific Tesla feature. FSD lets a driver set a “Speed Offset,” allowing the vehicle to travel above the posted limit by a margin the driver chooses.
The agency told the TCMV that “allowing automated systems to systematically exceed legal speed limits … risks undermining both the legal framework and the expected safety benefits of vehicle automation,” according to the letter.
Its conclusion was blunt: remove the speeding capability, or the committee should reject the technology. “Failing this, the Swedish Transport Administration recommends that TCMV vote against the proposed introduction,” the letter said.
The objection is not new in substance. As we reported in May, Swedish regulators were already skeptical of Tesla’s FSD over speeding and safety, with one investigator saying he was “quite surprised” to learn the system was allowed to speed at all. What’s changed is that the position is now a formal written recommendation to the committee that will decide FSD’s European fate.
How EU-wide approval works
Tesla secured its first European approval when the Dutch regulator RDW cleared FSD (Supervised) for use in the Netherlands in April, and RDW is now seeking EU-wide approval on Tesla’s behalf.
But a national approval is not a European one. For FSD to be recognized across the bloc, committee members representing 55% of EU member states and 65% of the EU’s population must vote “yes.” That threshold makes the position of multiple governments — not just one friendly regulator — decisive.
Sweden is not alone in its concerns. Finland and Norway have also flagged issues with the technology, ranging from speeding to performance on icy roads, conditions that are routine across the Nordics for much of the year.
A split among member states
Even as the Nordic countries push back, other governments have moved the opposite direction. Lithuania, Estonia, Belgium, and Denmark have each approved FSD nationally since the Netherlands opened the door, giving Tesla a growing list of countries where the system is legal.
That patchwork is exactly what an EU-wide vote is meant to resolve — and exactly why a single firm objection like Sweden’s matters. The more member states that line up against the speeding feature, the harder it becomes for RDW to assemble the qualified majority Tesla needs.
The timing is also awkward for Tesla. Just days ago, we reported that Tesla presented misleading “Full Self-Driving” safety data to European regulators, including a self-published claim that FSD could have “saved 32,000 lives” — a figure independent researchers say rests on invalid comparisons. Sweden’s letter suggests at least some regulators are not buying the marketing.
The stakes for Tesla in Europe
Tesla has framed FSD approval as central to its European recovery. The company’s sales collapsed in Europe in 2025 amid backlash over CEO Elon Musk’s political activities, and BYD has outsold Tesla in Europe for multiple months as Chinese automakers gain ground.
Musk had publicly projected EU-wide FSD availability by summer 2026. With Sweden now formally recommending a “no” vote unless Tesla changes the product, that timeline looks increasingly difficult to hit.
In 2026, Tesla started to recover from its demand issues in Europe, but it has more to do with high gas prices rather than FSD availability.
Tesla did not immediately respond to the Reuters report.
Electrek’s Take
Some countries don’t joke about speeding. In North America, it’s generally understood that you can reasonably go over the speed limit at times. I remember doing a test drive in Copenhagen a few years ago, and some people were recommending that I cross over to Sweden for the drive, but I was warned to follow the speed limit there.
Sweden’s letter is a bigger deal than it might look, because it moves the speeding objection from a regulator’s private skepticism into a formal recommendation aimed squarely at the committee that controls EU access.
The objection is hard to argue with. Tesla built a feature that deliberately lets the car break the speed limit, and is now asking European regulators to bless it. In a regulatory culture that treats posted limits as law rather than suggestion, “let drivers choose how much to speed” is a remarkably weak pitch. Sweden is essentially saying the fix is trivial: turn off the part that breaks the law, and we can talk.
The deeper problem is that Tesla keeps approaching Europe like it’s the U.S. — leaning on self-published safety stats, owner pressure campaigns, and a “trust us” posture. None of that travels well with Nordic regulators who want hard, independently verified data. The real question now is whether RDW can still assemble a qualified majority with Sweden, Finland, and Norway all uneasy. If it can’t, Tesla’s European autonomy story stalls right when the company needs a win most. Does Tesla quietly remove the speed offset to save the vote, or dig in and risk a “no”?
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