Slovenia on Monday became the sixth European Union member state to approve Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system, adding momentum to a country-by-country rollout that Tesla says is lifting interest in its cars, and that the registration data can neither confirm nor rule out.
The approval landed less than a month before an EU-wide vote on October 6 that could open FSD to all 27 member states at once.
Slovenia’s infrastructure minister reposted Tesla’s announcement with the words “Developing Slovenia,” according to coverage of the approval.
As with the five countries before it, Slovenia did not conduct its own testing, instead accepting the Dutch vehicle authority RDW’s original type certification issued on April 10 through mutual recognition.
Registration data across FSD-approved markets shows recovery from a depressed 2025, and in several of them the recovery began before approval.
The largest gains in Europe this year are in markets with new purchase incentives, France and Germany, neither of which has approved FSD, and Tesla has visibly allocated cars toward them at the expense of markets without incentives.
Isolating FSD from the refreshed Model Y, incentives, fuel prices and prior-year base effects is not possible on the monthly data.
European customers crossed 50 million kilometers on FSD in about three months.
Tesla’s second-quarter update said the company was “seeing elevated interest” in markets with FSD approval, reported “record net new subscriptions” in the quarter and a record North American attach rate, with more than 55% of new deliveries including an FSD subscription.
Ahead of the October 6 vote, Tesla published FSD safety evidence on September 1, responding to criticism from Reuters and the European Transport Safety Council that its earlier safety statistics were self-produced and difficult to verify.
Allocation Before Approval
Tesla’s European numbers in July and August are shaped first by where it chose to send cars.
In Norway, its largest market per capita and one with no FSD approval and no new incentive, Tesla registered 24 cars in July, down 97% from a year earlier, and 627 in August, down 79%, or 2,387 fewer than in August 2025, according to the Norwegian Road Federation.
Across the two months combined, Tesla’s Norwegian registrations fell by about 83%, from roughly 3,800 to 651, while the rest of the market grew: the OFV said that with Tesla excluded, Norwegian car registrations rose 17% in August.
In Sweden, Tesla registered 65 cars in July against an average above 900 a month in 2026, which Bilstatistik’s Swedish market chief attributed to “delivery problems.” Matthias Schmidt of Schmidt Automotive told Reuters that Norway’s 2025 base was inflated by buyers rushing ahead of a fiscal change at year-end, which is true, and does not explain a 97% July.
Spain, likewise without FSD or a new national incentive, fell 81% in July and 79% in August, so Norway and Spain both lost more than four-fifths of their year-earlier Tesla volume across the two months.
Italy (−77% and −36%), Portugal (−69% and −37%) and Sweden (−60% and −41%) fell steeply but by less over the two months combined, per national data compiled by eu-evs.com and Reuters.
Across the 14 markets Eu-EVs tracks monthly, which exclude France and Belgium, Tesla registered 2,626 cars in July, down 59.3%, while remaining up 38.5% for the year.
Over the same two months Tesla’s registrations rose 279% in France, where a €7,000 leasing subsidy applies and Tesla added a €5,000 trade-in offer, and Germany, with a federal purchase incentive from January, ran at record levels.
Netherlands
Before the April 10 clearance, Dutch Tesla sales were running deeply negative year over year: January fell 67% and February dropped 45%, continuing the decline that marked much of 2025.
March showed the first recovery, rising 18%.
After FSD went live, the trajectory shifted.
April rose 23%, May gained 31%, June added 4% and August climbed 32%.
July fell 19%, with 359 registrations against 1,023 in August, the quarterly rhythm in which Tesla’s Dutch registrations rise and fall by a factor of three or more between the first and second months of a quarter.
In aggregate, Dutch sales in the five months after FSD approval (April through August) reached 5,322 units, up 14.2% from 4,659 in the same months a year earlier, according to BOVAG registration.
Tesla’s 2025 Dutch total was 16,703, itself half of 2024’s more than 30,000.
By contrast, the three pre-approval months of 2026 totaled 2,665 units, a 22.7% decline from the year-earlier period.
Two Dutch factors sit alongside FSD. From January 1, 2027, employers face a pseudo-final levy on private use of fossil-fuelled company cars from which fully electric cars are exempt, and Dutch fleet buyers have already begun shifting: the Dutch BEV market turned to year-on-year growth in July after a first quarter down 23.3% and a second up 23.9%.
And the Model Y was the Netherlands’ best-selling car of any kind in the first half, at 4,317, a position it held in periods before FSD existed.
Belgium
Belgium approved FSD on June 10.
Its first full post-approval month was a decline: Tesla registered 307 cars in July, down 33% year on year, and fell to 21st among brands, before the quarterly rebound to 905 in August, per FEBIAC data.
Lithuania (May 20) and Estonia (May 29) are too small to read, with Tesla’s Lithuanian Model Y registrations at 40 in May and 114 in June and Tesla’s official Estonian deliveries beginning only in August.
Denmark
Denmark approved FSD on June 9, becoming the fourth European country to clear the system.
Danish sales had already been running above year-ago levels before approval — March surged 144% and May rose 136% — driven partly by the refreshed Model Y and favorable comparisons against a weak 2025 base.
The Danish market itself is up 13.2% year to date, the strongest growth in the Nordics, on EV demand.
Post-approval months maintained the momentum. The Model Y was Denmark’s best-selling car in June at 1,355.
June rose 39%, July gained 52% and August doubled to 967 units from 473 a year earlier, a 104% increase, according to bilstatistik.dk. The Model Y was Denmark’s second best-selling car in August at 693, behind the Skoda Elroq.
Combined, June through August reached 3,253 registrations, up 55.6% from 2,090 in the same period of 2025.
Pre-Approval
In countries where the system has not yet been scheduled for approval, the recovery has also been swift.
France refused to back an EU-wide approval in July, Germany’s KBA opened its own review and Czechia declined to join the consensus.
Tesla’s German registrations surpassed the full-year 2025 total of 19,390 units by the end of May, reaching 21,089 in five months.
As of the end of August, Tesla had sold 32,258 vehicles in the country. March alone, at 9,252, was Tesla’s best month in Germany since December 2022.
In 2025, German sales fell 48% year over year amid the transition to the refreshed Model Y, rising competition and fallout from CEO Elon Musk’s political involvement.
Monthly registrations dropped below 1,000 for the first time in nearly three years in April 2025, and hit a three-year low of 750 units in October.
Germany’s reinstated federal EV purchase incentive — a €3 billion program offering private buyers between €3,000 and €6,000 depending on household income and family size — has added further tailwind since applications opened in May.
Demand Drives GigaBerlin Ramp
Continent-wide, year-to-date registrations through April — even before the first country’s approval — stood at 89,429 units, up 45.8% from the same period a year earlier, according to ACEA data.
Tesla raised Model Y prices by €1,000 ($1,170) across several key European markets in late April — a move widely read as confirmation that demand was outpacing supply.
European demand has grown sharply enough to force Tesla’s Grünheide factory into overtime.
GigaBerlin scheduled mandatory special shifts in September as the plant races to lift weekly output from fewer than 6,500 Model Y units to 7,500 by mid-October, according to an internal email seen by Handelsblatt.
Plant director André Thierig had already set a target of cutting cycle time from about 80 seconds to 45 seconds and hired about 1,000 workers by the end of June to keep pace.
Asia-Pacific
South Korea, where FSD is available only on US-built vehicles, has become one of Tesla‘s largest export markets globally.
July registrations hit 10,237 units and August reached 10,400, extending Tesla‘s streak as the country’s best-selling imported brand to seven consecutive months.
First-half registrations reached 56,139 units, giving Tesla a 30.5% share of South Korea’s imported passenger car market — up from 13.9% a year earlier.
Year-to-date volume through August stands at approximately 76,776 units, already exceeding the company’s full-year 2025 total of 59,916.
The six-seat Model Y L, launched in the country in April, has been a significant contributor.
Tesla also recently began rolling out FSD V14 Lite to South Korean HW3 vehicles.
Australia received FSD in September 2025, the first right-hand-drive market with the software.
Year-to-date registrations through August reached 36,051 units, approximately double the 17,990 in the same period of 2025.
July stood out with 4,778 registrations, a 421% increase from 917 a year earlier. August followed with 7,685 units, up 163% from 2,927.
Only January posted a year-over-year decline, falling 32% from a strong prior-year base.
China’s Partial Approval
China is the counter-example.
Tesla’s domestic retail sales, per the CPCA, fell 12.4% to 316,251 in the first eight months of 2026, with August at 50,047, down 12.4% year on year for a third consecutive monthly decline and the weakest August since 2022, and July at 27,249.
FSD’s availability in China remains limited.
Tesla is now offering cash discounts on in-stock vehicles ahead of the quarter-end, suggesting momentum may be easing as competition from BYD, Xiaomi and others intensifies.
Exports from Shanghai, not domestic sales, are what carry Tesla China’s wholesale total.
North America
North America presents a contrasting case.
FSD has been available in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico for over a year, but domestic sales have fallen in every month of 2026.
August dropped 26% to an estimated 40,816 units, the steepest year-over-year decline of 2026.
Year-to-date volume stands at about 321,494, down 16.3% from the same period of 2025.
The decline is heavily shaped by the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit on September 30, 2025, which pulled forward demand into last year’s third quarter.
August and September 2025 were Tesla‘s two highest-selling US months, creating a base that 2026 volumes cannot match.
CEO Elon Musk framed FSD as a demand driver on the second-quarter earnings call on July 22, telling investors that US buyers were coming into stores wanting FSD “with whatever car comes with it essentially.”
Monthly volumes have nonetheless settled into a narrow band between 37,550 and 42,435 units, suggesting underlying demand has stabilized around 40,000 per month.
Other Tailwinds
FSD availability aligns with sales acceleration in the Netherlands, Denmark, South Korea, Australia and China.
Disentangling the software’s direct contribution from other tailwinds — the refreshed Model Y, the six-seat Model Y L, local incentive programs and recovering brand sentiment after a difficult 2025 — remains difficult.
Tesla has priced FSD in Europe as a €99 monthly subscription, making the software an incremental revenue stream rather than an upfront cost barrier.
At 1.48 million active subscriptions globally, recurring FSD revenue is growing into a material line item.
The October 6 EU-wide vote could accelerate the trend.
An affirmative decision would open Germany, France, Italy, Spain and 21 other member states simultaneously, pairing FSD access with a GigaBerlin production line pushing toward 7,500 weekly vehicles.
