Tesla is currently hiring Vehicle Operators in several locations across Europe, signaling the imminent launch of the Full Self-Driving (FSD) software in the region, where it still awaits regulatory approval.
According to its website’s career page, these listings are currently open in Prague (the Czech Republic), Budapest (Hungary), and in the German cities of Prüm and Berlin.
Tesla says in the job description that the new employees will “strengthen our team responsible for vehicle data collection.”
“The Driver/Vehicle Operator position is tasked with capturing high-quality data that contributes to improving our vehicles’ performance,” the company adds.
While Tesla battles with initial approval of the FSD (Supervised) software across the globe, owners in the United States are currently using Version 14 — which, according to Musk, is the “second biggest update ever,” only after V12.
Autonomy in Europe
Under EU’s New Vehicle General Safety Regulation (2019/2144), new cars sold in the bloc from July 2024 on must now be equipped with several safety features included with Level 1 or Level 2 autonomy.
Level 1 and Level 2 technologies correspond to driver assisted and partial automation systems under the SAE International Standard, which include Tesla‘s Autopilot (L1) and Ford‘s BlueCruise (L2).
The Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is a Level 2 system.
At the same time, companies such as Chinese start-ups WeRide and Pony.AI, and legacy automakers such as Volkswagen, have launched projects for L3 and L4 systems (conditional and high autonomy) in the continent.
FSD Approval
Earlier this month, speaking about the upcoming launch of the FSD in other parts of the globe, CEO Elon Musk once again urged owners to pressure safety regulators Europe.
“You can’t even get a super, even just normal supervised FSD is not allowed in Europe currently, which doesn’t make any sense,” the CEO stated.
He added that he has “had these crazy conversations with the regulators that seem like a Franz Kafka novel, where I’m like, well, look, we have billions of kilometers of data that shows that FSD increases safety.”
However, “they’re like, well, we have to have all these committee meetings.”
According to Tesla, US owners using FSD experience just one crash per 4.92 million miles — contrasting with one crash per 700,000 miles for the average in the country.
The company has successfully tested the software across several European cities over the past few months, documenting the rides on Tesla Europe’s X account.
After having successfully expanded to six countries, Musk said regulators are leaning to “fully” approve it in China in the first quarter of 2026.
“We have partial approval,” he noted, adding that “hopefully, we’ll have full approval in China around February or March or so. That’s what they’ve told us.”
