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Tesla Full Self-Driving could soon be allowed in Germany, gov approves legislation aimed at autonomous driving
The national Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany decided on Thursday to change an existing traffic law that had prohibited vehicles from being engaged in autonomous mode. Drawing on votes from both the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CSU), the Bundestag has agreed to allow fully autonomous driving vehicles to travel on Germany’s streets. The (translated) law reads, in part,
“During vehicle driving, the driver may turn away from traffic and vehicle control by means of highly automated or fully automated driving function… [but must] immediately [assume control] if he recognizes that the conditions for the intended use of the highly or fully automated driving functions no longer exist… even if he does not control the vehicle in the context of the intended use of this function.”
The law provides a balance between driver responsibility in the event of traffic incident and the ability of the the driver to release control of the vehicle to a control system, depending on situation and duration. The driver must retain the capacity to reassume control as well as to deactivate the control system. All vehicles with autonomous driving systems would have a “black box” data storage system, which would assist in determining fault in the event of an accident.
The new German law supersedes the 1968 “Vienna Convention on Road Traffic,” which specified that human drivers must have full control over their vehicle at any time. Of course, at that time of that law’s implementation, autonomous vehicles had not yet been introduced.
Tensions were high immediately preceding the vote, according to Germany’s golem.de newspaper, which described the level of autonomy to be permitted as “highly automated and fully automatic vehicles.” SPD deputy Kirsten Lühmann accusing the body of assigning drivers the roles of “experimental rabbits for new technology.” Stephan Kühn, the Green party deputy, also disagreed with the extent of the law. “It is not enough just to formulate in the justification of the legal text what the driver is allowed to do without worry while the computer is driving the car. This must be re-written into the law itself.”
The SPD defended the amendments as sound and timely.
German Federal Minister of Transport Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) had offered draft legislation for the new law in February, but it received violent criticism and underwent significant revision, particularly around data protection regulations. At the beginning of this week’s debate, he envisioned Germany as having “the most modern road traffic law in the world.” Dobrindt has rationalized the law as providing value added software innovation that could be homegrown in Germany and Europe. With the new systems, he said, will come increased traffic safety, fewer traffic jams, and reduced environmental pollution [emphasis added].
Germany is a forerunner for European autonomous driving, with some sections of public highways already designated as live testing zones. The Institute for the German Economy calculates that Germany has registered 58% of all global patents in autonomous driving since 2010.
The approved revision states that the owner of the car is still liable for actions taken while under autonomous mode, as prescribed by section 7 of the Road Traffic Act (Hazard Liability). Specific German autonomous driving regulations have not yet been established; those will come alongside international regulations and definitions and will likely change, too, as technological development in autonomous driving continues to progress. Like so many in the auto industry today, German engineers, scientists, and regulators are in a race to figure out the details of how autonomous cars will function so that they can be market ready by the early 2020’s.
Of course, Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has stated that his company’s electric vehicles will have autonomous capability by the second half of 2017. The Society of Automotive Engineers has identified different levels of autonomy, ranging from 0 to Level 5, with Level 5 signifying that a vehicle can drive itself at all times under all conditions and need no input from a human. Level 4 autonomy refers to a vehicle that can be autonomous almost all the time, within determined parameters, as seems to be outlined by the Bundestag.
Interestingly, according to Musk’s statements, Teslas may soon be able to approach Level 4. That would make Tesla R&D far ahead of any German innovation currently underway.
With a bicameral parliament, Germany has two chambers: the Bundestag (lower house) and the Bundesrat (Federal Council or upper house). Both chambers can initiate legislation, and most bills must be approved by both chambers, as well as the executive branch, before becoming law. Now that the autonomous driving legislation has been approved by the Bundestag, it will go before the Federal Council. Coalition forces feel confident that this week’s modifications to Dobrindt’s original draft proposal are sufficient to pass through the Bundestrat.
Bitkom CEO Bernhard Rohleder was excited about the law, saying, “The Bundestag has cleared the way for the Automnation Deutschland to be the world leader in autonomous driving.” He acknowledged that changes will occur around liability rules or the use of data. “But we must not make the mistake of trying to settle everything down to the end in a long-term debate, then other countries will create facts and we will have the opportunity to use this technology.”
The first production vehicles equipped with autonomous driving features will be introduced to Germany sometime in 2017. “We can also be innovative in the legal framework and do not need to hide from the Silicon Valley ,” said Ulrich Lange (CSU), a CSU member, argued during the final moments of debate.
Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
