Elon Musk's prediction that Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) service will be approved for sale in Europe and China before the end of the year won't pan out, it seems.

Not only does the Tesla AI team roadmap now list the FSD Europe and China versions as coming in the first quarter of 2025, but it also adds the "pending regulatory approval" condition, which means that there could be additional delays.

"With version 12.5, and maybe 12.6, but pretty soon," said Musk during the last earnings call, "we will ask for regular regulatory approval of the Tesla supervised FSD in Europe, China, and other countries."

The latest Tesla FSD v12.5 update is already rolling out, even to older cars with the HW3kit. The same Tesla AI team even lists FSD v13 as ready for an October release, in time for the Robotaxi, so Tesla might have already filed for FSD approval in Europe and China, and is now waiting on a decision.

At the time, Musk added that "we're likely to receive that before the end of the year, which will be a helpful demand driver in those regions, obviously" to pacify the investors, but now it seems that the self-imposed deadline is slipping.

Tesla is already in the good graces of Chinese regulators when it comes to some of the steps FSD should go through before it gets approved locally. Back in July, when Elon Musk visitedto discuss theFSD Chinalaunch, the local Association of Automobile Manufacturerssaid that Tesla, BYD, and others have aced its data security tests, a necessary requirement for regulators.

Tesla was also given the nod to test FSD on public roads with pilot vehicles, and China is in general way more open to experimenting with autonomous driving technologies than Europe, so FSD might be approved there first.

In Europe, Tesla has been demonstrating FSD to regulators, and at least one of them -Rikard Fredriksson, a Senior Advisor who worked on the Apple Car autonomy - came away impressed when he took a ride in a self-driving Model Y in Germany.

An FSD approval for the European Union as a whole, however, will have to go through more red tape than in China, so it remains to be seen if next March is a realistic timeframe.

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