“This came as a surprise!”: Tesla customers start to receive FSD supervised access in Australia

Tesla announced in August that its supervised full self-driving (FSD) software will soon be launching in Australia and New Zealand. Now, the company has begun sending early FSD-supervised invitations to customers nationwide. 

Gareth H is one of those early access users who shared the news on X with a video of the first drive with the caption: “Just received Full Self Driving (Supervised), Down Under! My first drive!”

In the video, a red Tesla Model 3 Performance is seen testing the system around the streets of Perth, with the drive part done at night, highlighting how confident the system is on Australian roads regardless of the time of day.

According to Gareth, the invitation to test the system was sent by Tesla via email and after accepting the request, the FSD Supervised software was sent to the car via an update: “This came as a surprise! Tbh I’m not sure how, but I got an email asking if I’d like early access. After I responded yes I got pushed an update.”

In May this year, Tesla released a video of its supervised full-self-driving (FSD), which showed a Tesla Model 3 driving on Australian roads in Melbourne without driver intervention. 

That excited many Australian owners who have been waiting for local testing for years and the latest update.

Then, two months later, in July, Tesla released another video showing a supervised FSD journey around the streets of Sydney. 

A few days later, the company’s country director, Thom Drew, shared on LinkedIn that there were no regulatory blocks for the software to be rolled out in right-hand-drive markets of Australia and New Zealand. 

In August, Tesla shared a video of FSD testing in New Zealand, highlighting its capabilities of driving on narrow inner-city streets of Auckland. During the drive, a Model 3 sedan was seen going around tight road sections, showcasing what the system could do on inner-city streets.

These videos highlighted the testing Tesla is undertaking to bring FSD to Australia and New Zealand ahead of the teaser video we saw on the software “Coming Soon” to our market.

This showcasing of the system on our local roads comes after the system was initially released in left-hand-drive US as a Beta a few years ago. Then earlier this year, it was launched in more left-hand-drive markets like Mexico, China (city streets version).

With this release as part of the early access program going out to customers marks a major milestone for Tesla’s FSD efforts as if released in the coming weeks, will put Australia as the first right-hand-drive market to land the software, ahead of even the UK.

More information on the imminent launch of FSD supervised and how it will be rolled out is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. 

We are also in the process of testing the FSD software at the moment with a loan vehicle from Tesla, and we look forward to sharing our take on the software’s capabilities in the coming days, so stay tuned. From the testing so far, let’s just say, it handles our roads way better than I expected for an initial release, and it’s going only to get better.

Riz Akhtar

Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.