HELSINKI: Finland's Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) said on Nov 11 that it was allowing Finnish Tesla owners to use their vehicles' semi-autonomous "assisted driving" system – where the car can be driven without physically touching the controls.
The decision means that Tesla "can immediately start offering the system to its customers in Finland," Traficom said in a statement.
Finland's decision comes before an expected final EU-wide approval of the system next year, the agency said.
The system uses an AI-enabled computer which is fed information gathered from the car's cameras to drive the vehicle, but the driver has sole legal responsibility and must constantly watch the road and be ready to take over.
The approval came after Tesla made some changes to the system and "will give Finnish Tesla users an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the system before the most challenging winter conditions arrive," Traficom added.
European countries have only begun to give conditional approval to the technology, which was formerly known as Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised.
The new name "Tesla Assisted Driving" describes the "true nature of the system," Senior Specialist Jukka Juhola from Traficom said.
It takes "future developments into account, as genuinely self-driving cars, where responsibility for driving shifts away from the driver, will become available alongside driver assistance systems," he said.
Tesla cars already use the semi-autonomous technology in the United States as well as in Australia, Canada and South Korea.
In Europe, the Netherlands authorised its use in April, followed by Estonia, Belgium, Lithuania and Denmark. – AFP
