Sweden has formally recommended that the EU votes against a bloc-wide rollout of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software unless the company removes the Speed Offset feature, a function which allows vehicles to exceed posted speed limits by a margin defined by the driver. The recommendation, contained in a letter dated 30 April and obtained by Reuters, was addressed directly to the EU’s Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV) ahead of its 30 June meeting to discuss the matter.

“Allowing automated systems to systematically exceed legal speed limits risks undermining both the legal framework and the expected safety benefits of vehicle automation,” the letter reads. A spokesperson for the Sweden’s Transport Agency (STA) confirmed to Reuters that its position has not changed since April, and that Sweden’s TCMV representative “will only vote in favour if Tesla’s speeding functionality is removed”. STA represents Sweden in TCMV and has engaged Tesla and the Dutch regulator RDW directly over FSD authorisation, including a two-hour meeting on 4 June. In a statement, it said it is still “assessing the matter to establish a Swedish position”. 

The Speed Offset dispute sits within the broader context of Tesla’s often-controversial approach to FSD driving styles. In the US, Tesla offers driving modes ranging from Sloth and Chill through to Hurry and, of course, Mad Max. The latter, which drew criticism when it was reintroduced in the October 2025 v14.1.2 update, explicitly enables more aggressive lane changes, tighter gaps and above-limit speeds.

The European version does not offer any comparably brazen naming conventions for its driving modes, instead providing Speed Offset and a Contextual Max Speed setting that adjusts to traffic flow. The underlying philosophy—that FSD should mimic assertive, slightly flexible human driving rather than rigid legal compliance—is, unfortunately for Tesla, exactly what Swedish and Nordic regulators find unacceptable in an autonomous system. 

The argument that matching traffic flow is safer in practice carries no weight with a regulatory culture that treats the posted limit as the law, not a mere suggestion. That Tesla has retained and actively marketed these features while simultaneously lobbying for European approval suggests either a significant miscalculation of the regulatory environment or a deliberate test of how much flexibility regulators will extend.

Finland and Norway have raised parallel concerns about the speeding functionality and FSD’s performance on icy roads. Across much of the Nordic countries, icy conditions are common across a substantial portion of the year. Tesla’s training data, largely derived from US road conditions and especially California, is relatively lacking on this front. The automaker has also faced recent criticism for purportedly misleading European regulators about the capabilities and safety potential of FSD.

Still, Estonia approved FSD nationally on the grounds that the driver retains full legal responsibility under the supervised model, but has not yet decided how it will vote at TCMV; Denmark has taken the same position on driver responsibility. On 10 June, Belgium became the fifth country to approve FSD in this fashion. Meanwhile, the pan-EU patchwork is hardening into two distinct camps: smaller states prepared to approve on the basis of driver accountability, and Nordic transport authorities that want the system itself to comply with the law regardless of driver override. 

The qualified majority required for EU-wide approval—15 of 27 member states representing at least 65% of the EU population—effectively requires sign-off from Germany, France or Italy. Unfortunately for Tesla, none of these major voting blocs has moved toward approval. Sweden’s formal “no” vote recommendation does not block the count arithmetically, but it signals to other undecided states that opposing Tesla on a clear regulatory principle carries no political cost. 

The TCMV meeting on 30 June is not expected to produce a vote, making it a positioning session rather than a decision point. Tesla faces a choice it has not yet publicly acknowledged: remove Speed Offset for the European market—technically straightforward as a software configuration—and potentially salvage the qualified majority, or withhold the feature and accept that the bloc-wide approval either slips well into 2027 or is lost entirely.