Sludge

*disclaimer: this essay is totally human written - video is by claude motion trained on my Dutch message board posts

*disclaimer 2: I understand many people in Europe can’t wait until they get FSD, and I can relate and understand and hope it releases soon, because still with all the problems, it is an impressive system!

Sludge is what you should remember when talking about FSD (TAD) in Europe. https://grokipedia.com/page/sludge_theory

For clarity, FSD (Supervised) and TAD can be used interchangeably.

I have been writing about this on Dutch message boards for a few years now, but I moved over to X in May 2026 (sorry it took so long). But I’ve been talking about Tesla since 2014, almost every day, multiple hours per day.

So a lot of people don’t know that Tesla asked the RDW to approve FSD (Supervised) 24 months ago. Then the RDW took 18 months (!) to approve a level 2+ system in the Netherlands that was already driving safely in the USA.

This is of course beyond ridiculous, but when I talk about this to a lot of people in Europe, they do not understand. “Trust the bureaucrats,” they say.

I do think it is changing in the last few months.

Okay so, we got the approval way too late, but it is what it is.

And sludge is also the slow approval by the other countries, not just the implementation itself. Since April only 8 of 27 EU countries have approved it, the Netherlands included, and the EU-wide vote won’t happen before December (although it is possible a lot of countries will approve it before December).

Then the RDW said that they wanted to approve every update Tesla is rolling out. Like why!? Other ADAS systems do not have to get every update checked, and unfortunately the result is that we are now on the 10th of October and we are still on 14.2.2.6, which is night and day compared to 14.3.10.

I work as a Principal engineer in an ops team for a big enterprise, so I already called it out in April and told people it would end horribly (and it did).

A lot of people in the Netherlands are also cancelling their subscription, because 14.2.2.6 is just not it.

When we are driving on FSD (Supervised) I often get the message that I am tired (!?), even if I just started driving and when I am on FSD Supervised. This is SLUDGE and infuriates me beyond belief. So now I ask Grok to turn it off every time, but because I do a lot of short trips I keep having to do this.

Then when driving I also can’t move my body, because otherwise the DMS keeps complaining that I am not paying attention. Some friends are now driving with sunglasses at 7 in the morning so the DMS doesn’t nag.

Besides that, the EU DMS is hardcoded to Sloth, which isn’t my driving style (although I am a very defensive driver in urban areas).

(I also drive a Zeekr 001 and there I can just drive on ADAS when going 130 and no nags whatsoever.)

They are now treating FSD like it is the most dangerous thing ever - but you know what is dangerous? Human drivers.

The sludge is what kills people, maybe some people would be alive in 2027 who aren’t today due to sludge regarding FSD, and that is such a shame.

Next post will be about anti-fragility.

Hope you enjoyed my rambling - and please like and drop a follow if you liked the content :)