France tests Tesla's self-driving tech as Europe moves closer to autonomous cars
US electric carmaker Tesla has provided France with two vehicles fitted with its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to test on public roads, to allow regulators to check safety data provided by the company and from tests in the Netherlands.
France's Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said the decision came after a “constructive exchange” with Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk.
“With the provision of two vehicles equipped with FSD by Tesla, we are now entering a new phase: that of on-road testing,” he said in a post on X late Tuesday.
France already allows certain forms of assisted driving, though each type of vehicle, use case and location require specific authorisation.
Safety reservations
FSD is not fully autonomous, but rather a supervised driver-assistance system. It can accelerate, brake and steer a vehicle, but the driver must remain attentive and ready to take control.
Tesla has been working with France for several months on technical changes that could allow France to approve FSD at an EU level.
The bloc is expected to vote on the technology before the end of the year, a source in the French Transport Ministry told Reuters this week.
In July, Tabarot said that France was not yet satisfied with the safety trade-offs, pointing in particular to speed limits and warnings designed to keep drivers attentive.
The tests are expected to produce results by mid- to late September.
The Netherlands became the first European country to provisionally approve FSD in April. Belgium, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania have since followed.
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EU vote
Tesla, whose European sales have dropped in the face of competition from European and Chinese electric vehicle companies – as well as opposition to Musk's politics – has been lobbying European regulators to approve wider use of FSD.
On Tuesday, the company said it had recorded 4.1 times fewer collisions in Teslas fitted with FSD than in manually driven ones in the five European countries where the system is currently permitted.
Tesla said the figures were based on more than 100 million kilometres of driving data collected between April and August. FSD-equipped vehicles were involved in three collisions on highways and nine on other roads, compared to 137 and 490 collisions respectively for manually driven vehicles.
An EU vote could take place as early as October. Approval would require support from at least 15 of 27 member states, representing at least 65 percent of the bloc's population.
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Delivery robots
France is also moving to regulate other forms of autonomous transport. A decree published in early August allowed for the approval of delivery robots to be used on public roads.
The compact electric vehicles had previously lacked a specific regulatory framework. They can now be classified in the EU's L category, which covers vehicles including mopeds and motorcycles.
They can operate on roads but must be remotely supervised, and local authorities will decide which areas and routes they can use.
The government said the rules were introduced ahead of a wider EU legal framework for autonomous delivery vehicles.
Meanwhile Waymo, the self-driving technology company owned by Google parent company Alphabet, is also preparing to expand in Europe, with plans to launch driverless taxis in Munich.
The company said last month it would begin testing its vehicles in the southern German city, initially using human drivers to map roads and assess local conditions before launching a its driverless service by the end of next year.
(with newswires)