On Monday the company said it would allow customers across the continent to transfer the feature to the purchase of a new vehicle. They can thank Sweden’s Alexander Kristensen for that. Due to his visibility as one of the most active European fans in the Tesla online community, he caught the attention of CEO Elon Musk, who earlier this month agreed it was a fair proposal.

A fan of the entrepreneur’s endeavors in EVs and rocketry, Kristensen put down 77,000 Swedish krona (or the equivalent of $8,000) for FSD when he finally splurged on his first car in 2021, the upscale Performance version of the Model 3 sedan.

“I was dreaming of owning a Tesla one day, so when I bought it, I ticked all the boxes—fully kitted,” he says in an interview, held with Fortune at his suggestion true to form via an audio call feature on Musk’s X social media platform.

Previously anyone looking to trade in their old Tesla for a new one, for example, would automatically forfeit the feature, which Tesla traditionally has tied to the vehicle rather than the customer.

‘We received a lot of complaints’

Photo: Alexander Kristensen

Kristensen argues FSD Supervised, a slightly less advanced form of the software powering Tesla’s small fleet of robotaxis in Austin that is widely available in North America, can save lives when used properly. He flew this week to the Texas capital just to experience both FSD Supervised and Unsupervised, and is more convinced than ever it needs to come to Europe.

For Tesla owners across the continent, it has been a particularly raw deal: despite paying upfront for it, they never had a chance to experience FSD—not even in its Supervised version, where a driver is required to be behind the wheel ready to take control at a moment’s notice

Kristensen wants to change that by getting the ball rolling in his native Sweden. He has mounted a one-man lobbying campaign to press city officials in Stockholm to approve testing of the self-driving technology.

At the end of last month, he appeared on SVT, the country’s equivalent of the BBC, to raise awareness for the issue and put forward his case for why the technology is needed. And Stockholm city officials have taken notice of his efforts.

“We received a lot of emails and complaints from Tesla enthusiasts who want us to approve this,” a spokeswoman for the Stockholm municipal traffic authority tells Fortune. “But we declined Tesla’s application, because there have been accidents in other countries, and the company itself presented data that indicated several safety concerns remain.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Why FSD hasn’t been approved to Europe

In the U.S. market, carmakers can vouch their technology conforms with regulations through what is known at “self-certification”. Make a mistake, however, and you can quickly find yourself on the wrong side of a lawsuit, as Tesla has often learned. Currently the company faces two cases, in California and Florida, related to its self-driving features. 

This is handled differently in most parts of the world, Europe included, where carmakers must first prove their products conform to the regulatory standards. This happens through a type approval process called “homologation” which independently ensures products meet minimum safety and environmental guidelines before they can be made commercially available. While time-consuming, the advantage is manufacturers have substantially greater legal protections in the event of a liability claim.

These standards are laid down for the auto industry by a United Nations body in Geneva called the UNECE, which attempts to create one harmonized set of rules all countries are free to adopt. Since this facilitates commerce by eliminating duplicative red tape across jurisdictions, most do—but achieving consensus is challenging with so many different vested interests.

As a result, progress has been glacial when it comes to approving the use even of advanced driving assist features. Risky maneuvers initiated by the vehicle, such as changing lanes during the flow of traffic, have not been widely allowed outside of testing.

Bad behavior could be encouraged, as has often been seen in videos where drivers are eating or drinking, making it difficult for them to react to sudden developments. If used in combination with an attentive human, however, the technology could prove highly effective at reducing the number of traffic fatalities on European roads.

Everyday authorities wait can be costly

This is what Kristensen is hoping to fix. If approved testing is already occurring in a few areas like Amsterdam, Paris and Madrid, there is no logical reason why Stockholm should be any exception.

European cities are much more similar in road conditions than their U.S. peers where sunny Phoenix, Arizona, with its wide streets, is far easier for self-driving cars to master than the narrow cross-streets of cold and rainy New York City.

“I don’t understand this argument regarding safety concerns, since this is in my opinion is the only way we can reach the goal of zero traffic fatalities in Sweden. It’s not having FSD that makes our roads less safe,” he continues. “Every day that regulators keep saying they don’t trust the system, people can die.”

The sooner a sufficiently large amount of driving data can be collected, the quicker its performance can be analyzed in the hopes it can eventually be approved for use by drivers across Europe’s single market.

Kristensen himself lives in the south of the country, but he’s concentrating his efforts on the capital since places like Gothenburg and Malmö would not be as ideal.

“Stockholm is by far the largest city in Sweden,” says Kristensen. Gothenburg, the country’s second largest metropolitan area, would likely put up resistance. “Gothenburg is the empire of Volvo,” he says, referring to the domestic car brand whose global headquarters is there.

One hundred percent commitment to the cause

Stockholm’s traffic authortities for their part tell Fortune the city is definitely not “not anti-innovation” per se. They point to trials for drone deliveries, though the spokeswoman said none involved self-driving cars. 

“It’s also a question of timing and resources for us. We don’t have the capacity to work on this project for the moment,” she explains, adding the denial to Tesla is not written in stone and could change in the future.

While Kristensen would certainly welcome assistance from Musk or Tesla in lobbying Stockholm, he hasn’t asked and isn’t expecting any. That’s what differentiates Tesla from other carmakers: its fans are well known for volunteering their own time, famously helping in earlier years with the end-of-quarter push to deliver cars to new owners.

Musk’s assistance might not be constrctive, either, as his reputation in Europe took a beating due to his former alliance with Donald Trump and his vocal endorsement of the continent’s populist parties, including the far-right AfD in Germany. 

Even before the Tesla CEO’s divisive politics helped tank demand in markets like Sweden, he had ignited an ongoing two-year old conflict with the country’s industrial labor union.

Kristensen, who hosts a weekly Spaces discussion on X devoted to Tesla each Friday, says he’s prepared to lobby all the way up to the next municipal elections in Stockholm, scheduled for next year.

“If I commit to something, I will stick to it. Either I do it to a hundred percent or not at all,” he says. 

Just as Kristensen was speaking with Fortune, he received the highest compliment of all: Elon Musk shared one of his posts about strong Tesla sales in Norway. Elated, he interrupted himself mid-thought, “Wow, that’s probably good for another 11 million views!”