What Musk said about Full Self-Driving and driver warnings
Elon Musk spoke about Tesla’s FSD progress during the company’s earnings call with investors and analysts. An analyst asked whether drivers could soon check email while FSD drives. Musk answered that some drivers switch to manual driving to check their texts so that the system does not keep warning them, steering with a knee and not looking at the road. Musk said this is significantly less safe than letting people check their texts occasionally without the warnings, but that Tesla wants to be cautious. Musk called this a “perverse situation”. He said Tesla needs to be very confident that the chance of injury is low before it lets drivers check email or texts while the car drives. For now, FSD (Supervised) still requires the driver to pay attention and be ready to take over. Autonomous driving technology has presented Tesla with numerous difficulties in its development process. The company has experienced several investigations and product recalls during its operating history. Several NHTSA investigations have happened about Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD systems because of accidents that have raised safety concerns. Some of them ended in recalls fixed with software updates. In December 2023, for example, Tesla recalled more than 2 million vehicles to update Autopilot’s driver-attention controls after a two-year NHTSA investigation. In October 2024, NHTSA opened another investigation into about 2.4 million vehicles with FSD after crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian.Navigating global regulations: Tesla’s approach to autonomous driving
Musk maintains positive expectations for Tesla’s autonomous driving advancements even though his team faces multiple difficulties. Musk said he sees a path for Tesla to become the most valuable company in the world, mainly thanks to autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. He called that path difficult but achievable. Tesla faces multiple obstacles, including government regulations and public resistance, on its path toward achieving its vision. Different regions follow very different procedures when it comes to regulating autonomous driving technology. In the United States, Tesla customers can get FSD (Supervised), which since February 2026 is sold only as a subscription, and the driver must stay attentive. Tesla dropped the “Beta” label in 2024. FSD was not approved in the European Union when Musk spoke, and he blamed layers of regulation and paperwork with the Dutch authority, which is Tesla’s main regulator in Europe. That has partly changed: the Dutch regulator RDW approved FSD (Supervised) on 10 April 2026, a first in Europe, and several other countries have recognized the approval. Approval across the whole EU still needs a vote of member states, which reports in late September 2026 said could not take place before December. The different regulatory standards in the USA and the EU prevent Tesla from gaining worldwide approval for its self-driving system. FSD deployment from Tesla functions slowly under the direction of Musk. Musk said Tesla would launch unsupervised self-driving as a paid service in Austin, Texas, in June 2025, starting small as a safety precaution. Tesla did start a small robotaxi service in Austin on 22 June 2025, with about ten Model Y vehicles and a Tesla employee in the front passenger seat as a safety monitor. In January 2026 it began some rides with no safety monitor in the car, mixed in with monitored vehicles. The implementation moves in stages, which resembles the process of testing water first before complete immersion, according to Musk.The truth behind Musk’s claims: Is Tesla’s FSD ready for the real world?
The impressive nature of Musk’s statements about the development of FSD technology at Tesla requires critical assessment. The FSD implemented by Tesla stands at a point where it has demonstrated meaningful improvement but remains short of delivering complete autonomous functionality. The FSD system calls for driver oversight while functioning under specific restrictions and possible system malfunctions. The evidence shows that FSD technology from Tesla is advanced but suffers from occasional failures in automation. The warning beeps are attention checks. Tesla’s driver monitoring looks at whether the driver is holding the wheel and, in newer software, whether they are looking at the road. A driver who drops out of FSD just to read a phone is not using the system as intended. Still, regulators have questioned how well these checks work: after its investigation, NHTSA concluded that Autopilot’s attention checks could be insufficient, making misuse by drivers foreseeable. Elon Musk’s ambitious plan for Full Self-Driving at Tesla sparks mixed responses because of its inspiring qualities and controversial nature. The remarkable FSD developments present substantial management requirements along with their evident achievements. This technology’s responsible and safe implementation depends on the combined commitment of Tesla and its end-users. Safety demands that innovation operates in a state of equilibrium. To fulfill its mission of autonomous driving advancement, Tesla needs to examine the real-world effects of integrating its technology for performance that pleases safety requirements.First published on 5 February 2025 and corrected on 28 October 2026 to remove inaccurate statements and update outdated information.
