Tesla Hands European Owners a Free Two-Month FSD Trial

Tesla has started handing European owners a free two-month trial of Full Self-Driving (Supervised), the second time the company has given the software away in the region since it first cleared EU approval in April. Owners are being notified by email, and the trials carry an expiry date of 2 October 2026 — placing the start of the wave in the first days of August.

The giveaway is confined to the countries where FSD (Supervised) is actually legal to use. That remains a short list, and it has not grown since June.

Where the trial applies

Five EU member states have switched the system on, and all of them lean on a single Dutch decision rather than approvals of their own:

The Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted type approval on 10 April, the first sign-off of its kind anywhere in the European Union. The four countries that followed fast-tracked their own programmes on the back of it.

Owners are confirming the emails independently. An owner in the Netherlands posted on r/teslamotors on 4 August that Tesla had notified them by email of "a two month free trial of FSD (Supervised) again, starting now," adding that a friend received the same message. That owner had already had a free month in May and June — which is what makes this the second round rather than the first.

Why Tesla is giving it away

The commercial logic is straightforward: trials convert. Tesla's Q2 2026 results put global FSD active subscriptions at 1.48 million, and European uptake has been additive to that figure since the spring approvals. A two-month window is long enough for a driver to build the habit of switching FSD on for a commute, and it lands just as Tesla has fresh safety numbers to point at.

On 28 July, Tesla Europe published its first regional safety metrics for the system, claiming FSD in Europe is 5.2 times safer than manual driving across 65 million kilometres logged in the region. Handing out trials while those figures are circulating is not a coincidence.

Europe's approval map is still the bottleneck

For most European owners, the trial is academic — their country has not approved the software, so there is nothing to activate. EU-wide recognition of the Dutch approval requires a qualified majority in the TCMV committee: at least 15 member states representing 65% of the EU population. That vote is expected in October — the same month these trials expire — and until it lands, national approvals are the only route.

Some regulators are moving anyway. Finland has signalled it may approve FSD before the EU vote rather than wait for it. Progress in the big markets is mixed. France has refused to recognise the Dutch approval, holding out for an EU-level decision, and Czechia has taken the same position. Germany's KBA is still weighing the system, with unrestricted Autobahn speeds the unresolved question, while Tesla has filed a fresh application in Italy.

Until the TCMV moves, free trials will keep landing in the same five countries — roughly 11% of European nations — no matter how good the safety data looks.