By Mauro Orru
Tesla gained approval to roll out a suite of advanced driver-assistance features in Estonia, the third European Union country to greenlight the system as Elon Musk's electric-vehicle maker seeks to bring the technology to more markets.
The Estonian Transport Administration said Friday that it would allow Tesla drivers to use the company's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system that helps them change lanes and navigate around other vehicles and objects, calling the decision a logical step as some self-driving and remote-controlled vehicles have been operating in the country since 2017.
Tesla said in a post on X that it would soon begin rolling out the technology in Estonia. FSD doesn't make vehicles fully autonomous and is meant to be used only with a fully attentive driver, according to Tesla's website.
Estonia becomes the EU's third member state to approve FSD, following Lithuania last week and the Netherlands in April. The Netherlands Vehicle Authority, or RDW, said the system had been tested for more than a year and a half and that using it correctly made a positive contribution to road safety.
The agency submitted an application to have the technology approved across the whole of the EU, though individual countries can recognize the Dutch approval and allow Tesla to roll out FSD as EU authorities review the application.
A spokesperson for the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said in April that if evidence from test results proved satisfactory and if there is support from a majority of member states, legislation would be prepared authorizing the Netherlands to grant a special approval that would pave the way for an EU-wide rollout of Tesla's FSD.
Estonia's approval comes as Tesla continues to invest in Europe, where its sales are bouncing back after a slump that stretched more than a year as the company faced customer backlash due to Musk's involvement with the Trump administration on top of fierce competition from Chinese auto giant BYD.
Earlier this month, Tesla said it would inject $250 million into its Berlin-Brandenburg plant in Germany to hire more workers and ramp up production as the company aims for one million cars built on site. It recently hit the 750,000 milestone.
The site, which opened in March 2022, makes hundreds of thousands of Model Y vehicles and millions of battery cells, the energy storage units that power electric vehicles.
Write to Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 29, 2026 11:10 ET (15:10 GMT)
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