FSD & Autopilot

MOIA America and Beep began carrying invited passengers in autonomous VW ID. Buzz vans in Lake Nona, Orlando on 5 October 2026 — six vehicles, three fixed routes, an attendant aboard. Orlando is also one of six US metros where Tesla's robotaxi runs.

BMW will enable Highway Assistant in Sweden with software release 11/26 in November 2026, allowing hands-off driving to 130 km/h with lane changes confirmed by looking at the door mirror. It works because BMW holds UN R171 DCAS approval, which is recognised across 18 European markets. Tesla's FSD Supervised rides on a Dutch national exemption recognised in eight countries, and Sweden is not one of them.

Tesla's Robotaxi app went live in at least 14 European app stores over the weekend of 3-5 October 2026, localised and showing both Cybercab and Model Y. Opening it in Europe lists seven American service areas and offers only a notification sign-up. FSD Supervised is approved in eight European countries under a Dutch exemption; a driverless service is approved in none.

Tesla's Robotaxi account said on 3 October 2026 that Austin service now runs until 11 PM, an hour later than the 10 PM finish in place since August. Musk gave the first reason Tesla has offered for the night ceiling: the cars cannot reliably see pets in the dark. The window is still three hours shorter than the 20-hour day Tesla ran until August 2026, and 24/7 operation remains tied to FSD v15.

Nissan announced ADventure on 28 September 2026: a GBP 3 million UK government-backed project with WMG at the University of Warwick and PAVE UK, putting an autonomous 2022 Leaf on public roads in Cambridge. The research object is how an autonomous passenger service should be designed, ahead of the Automated Vehicles Act regime expected in late 2027.

The family of Steven Alvarez, killed when his Model 3 left a Clute, Texas street at 104 mph in May 2026, has sued Tesla in Travis County alleging the car accelerated on its own. Police called it a probable medical episode. Tesla's own filing to NHTSA says driver assistance was Verified Engaged. The data that would settle it is redacted.

Croatia's State Office for Metrology (DZM) approved FSD (Supervised) on 28 September 2026 by recognising the Dutch RDW's provisional Article 39 approval, making Croatia the eighth European country to allow the system. On 10 September the same office had said a decision was unlikely before further EU-level discussion. Three of the eight national approvals — Slovenia, Czechia and Croatia — have landed in the past three weeks, while the EU-wide decision has slipped from October to December.

Momenta has signed a global partnership with Dongfeng Stellantis Automotive Technology to develop assisted driving for Peugeot and Jeep battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models from 2027, based on its R7 world model with a Level 3 roadmap. It is the first Momenta deal with a Western carmaker that extends beyond China to Europe. Momenta logged 321,000 installations in the first half of 2026, over 1 million cumulatively across 105 models and 26 automaker partners — while Tesla's FSD approval in the EU has slipped to a December committee meeting at the earliest.

A family from Kirkland, Washington is suing Tesla over a June 2023 incident in which their 2023 Model X allegedly accelerated from a stop through a red light, burst its tyres against a curb and injured a father and his 14-year-old daughter. The complaint blames Autopilot for failing to hold the car stopped and for preventing the driver from regaining control. Tesla removed the case to federal court on 23 September 2026. The wider context matters: in March 2026 NHTSA denied a defect petition covering 2.26 million Teslas that alleged exactly this kind of sudden unintended acceleration, finding the reported incidents were pedal misapplication rather than a vehicle fault.

Changan Mazda launched the updated EZ-60 in China on 26 September 2026 with four LiDAR variants adding motorway navigation assist to 130 km/h and urban navigation assist to 80 km/h, for 12,000 yuan over the standard versions. The same car is sold in Europe as the CX-6e from 49,990 euros in Germany - more than three times the Chinese guide entry price of 119,900 yuan - and without the LiDAR system. It is a direct point of comparison for Tesla FSD, which is still working through European approval.

The draft agenda for the 119th Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles meeting on 6 October 2026 gives the Dutch Article 39 request 25 minutes of discussion and no vote. The committee does not meet again until December, pushing any EU-wide FSD authorisation into 2027.

Waymo's Safety Impact dashboard, updated in September 2026 with data through June, reports 271.3 million rider-only miles and 82% fewer injury-causing crashes than a human benchmark. The figures are Waymo's own; an independent IIHS study on a smaller sample landed close to them.

NHTSA opened Preliminary Evaluation PE26007 into comma.ai on 21 September 2026, covering about 30,000 comma three, 3X and four devices after five crashes that killed three people and injured eleven. In every case a car running openpilot hit a stopped or slow-moving vehicle in its own lane. It is the same failure NHTSA investigated Tesla Autopilot for under PE21-020 in 2021.

Firmware 2026.27.10 and 2026.27.11 bring FSD v14.2 Lite to Hardware 3 Model S and Model X for the first time, ending more than a year on the v12.6 branch. Only the redesigned 2021-refresh cars are taking it so far, the numbers are tiny, and the Lite branch still has not shipped in Europe.

Mercedes-Benz signed a definitive production agreement with Wayve on 22 September 2026 to put the map-free Wayve AI Driver into future vehicles within two years, the first premium-segment deployment. Mercedes has not named the models, the markets or the automation level, and it keeps its Level 3 Drive Pilot running alongside.

On 21 September 2026 the Czech Ministry of Transport recognised the provisional approval of Tesla FSD Supervised that the Dutch authority RDW issued on 10 April, making Czechia the seventh European country where the system can be used. In July the same ministry had refused to do exactly this, saying it would wait for a common EU procedure. The system remains SAE Level 2: the driver stays responsible. The subscription costs 2,400 CZK a month and Tesla says the first customer cars get it within days.

Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Matt Holmes said on 17 September 2026 that the department is still asking what the process is for gaining access to and moving a Cybercab, which has no steering wheel or pedals. Tesla has provided three days of training, emergency guidebooks and a touchscreen joystick, and published a first-responder training video on 18 September, but a fire captain called the training "not the silver bullet" and asked for federal autonomous-vehicle standards.

Tesla released its first full year of FSD (Supervised) fleet data for Australia and New Zealand on 18 September 2026, covering 17 September 2025 to 16 September 2026. Cars on FSD covered 160 million km and crashed about 40% less often per kilometre than the 2.4 billion km driven manually. Unlike the tiny Belgian sample, this dataset is large enough to mean something — but it is Tesla's own, it mixes both countries, and it compares drivers who chose when to engage the system.

Thatcham Research ran a Tesla Model Y, a BMW i5 and an MG ZS over 4,500-plus miles of mostly public British roads for three weeks as part of a new event-based assisted-driving test programme. The Model Y triggered 122 unnecessary braking events, against 8 for the i5 and 6 for the ZS. Thatcham's principal ADAS engineer says Tesla deliberately calibrates its system more sensitively than regulation requires, and the risk is drivers switching it off entirely.

On 18 September 2026 Flemish Mobility Minister Annick De Ridder put Belgium's own Full Self-Driving safety data before the Flemish Parliament. Cars in the scheme covered 24.6 million kilometres with FSD engaged between 11 June and 31 August 2026. Away from motorways FSD recorded one collision per 9.5 million kilometres against 150 collisions in almost 147 million kilometres of manual driving. On motorways the advantage is far smaller. Five collisions involved participating cars; FSD was not engaged in one, and investigators linked none of the rest to the system.

Lucid and Bolt announced on 17 September 2026 that Bolt will deploy at least 25,000 autonomous vehicles across Europe, built on Lucid's Midsize platform with Nvidia's Hyperion architecture and aimed at SAE Level 4. There is no deployment date, no named city, no disclosed money, and the Midsize platform was delayed on 4 August 2026.

Tesla's Robotaxi app appeared on the Canadian Google Play Store on 16 September 2026, five months after the Android release in the United States and about a year after Canadian iOS users got it. There is no robotaxi service in Canada: the app signs you in and works when you travel to a US city that has one.

Einride and Lidl started daily driverless deliveries with a cab-less SAE Level 4 truck in Edermünde, Hesse on 15 September 2026, under a KBA permit granted on 14 August and valid to at least 28 February 2027. The truck carries 15 Euro pallets at up to 25 km/h with no safety operator aboard.

Tesla reported 236 driver-assistance crashes to NHTSA for July 2026, the most it has ever filed in a single month, beating June's 209. Four were fatal. Tesla's filings record four deaths; counting the people in the other vehicles, seven died. In every one of the four, Tesla's own telemetry says Autopilot or FSD was engaged, and in none of them was the public told.