Finland clears Tesla assisted driving tech after changes

By Marie Mannes

STOCKHOLM, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Finland granted provisional approval on Wednesday for Tesla's Assisted Driving system (TAD) after the US automaker made changes to the technology, allowing its use on Finnish roads ahead of an EU-wide vote.

Nearly a dozen countries, including Slovakia and Belgium, have granted provisional approvals for the technology, which allows vehicles to steer, accelerate and brake automatically under driver supervision.

However, Tesla has yet to secure backing from any of the EU's largest member states, whose support is likely to be crucial to winning approval across the bloc.

The technology needs support from a qualified majority of EU states. A rejection at EU level would invalidate national approvals already granted.

Finland's transport authority, Traficom, said it approved the system after Tesla renamed it from "Full Self-Driving" and tightened speed-control settings that critics said encouraged speeding.

The regulator stressed its decision did not commit Finland to support the technology in the EU-wide vote, which it expects this winter. However, it said it wanted drivers to gain experience with the system before driving conditions worsen.

"We wanted to go a little bit ahead to allow drivers to use the system on our roads before the really bad winter conditions arrive," Traficom's Jukka Juhola told Reuters.

The next meeting at which an EU vote could take place is scheduled for December.

Finland, which has 8,000-9,000 TAD-compatible Teslas, had signalled in June that it could approve the technology ahead of an EU-wide decision.

"It represents around 0.3% of the entire car fleet on roads in Finland, so that's actually one of the reasons why we feel we can move forward with this decision already because the number of cars is quite small," Juhola said.

(Reporting by Marie Mannes and Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm. Editing by Terje Solsvik and Mark Potter)