Getting road approval in Germany and Spain
Announced in January 2026 and not yet under way. My scope is the German and Spanish legislative analysis, road approval for supervised public-road testing in both countries, and the test and release process from Scania set up again for a new customer.
IVECO and Plus announced a Level 4 programme in Spain in January 2026. It has not started.
The page is here anyway, because my part in it is already defined, and because a career told only in finished things is a misleading one. What follows is scope, not achievement. When there is a result, this page will say so.
What the work is
Three strands, each of which has a predecessor elsewhere on this timeline.
The problem space. A detailed analysis of the German and Spanish legislative requirements the programme has to satisfy — the same exercise as turning European road law into requirements, run against a corpus this programme has not touched.
The approval. Road approval for supervised public-road testing of SuperDrive, PlusAI’s Level 4 autonomous driver, in both countries. In Germany that route is the AFGBV, the ordinance that has governed the approval and operation of vehicles with an autonomous driving function since 2022. Spain has its own, and establishing what it is belongs to the work rather than preceding it.
The process. Rolling out the test and release process established at Scania in Sweden. That process has travelled once already, across the TRATON programme; this is the first time it moves to a customer outside it.
What is different about it
Two jurisdictions at the same time, rather than one after the other. The German framework I have worked inside for three years; the Spanish one is new to the programme, and the honest statement of risk is that I do not yet know how much of the German answer transfers.
My guess — and it is a guess, which is why it is written down here to be checked later — is that the method transfers completely and the content transfers hardly at all. Legislation as a stakeholder with needs, decomposed into requirements and test cases and kept traceable as it changes, is not a German idea. Which clauses apply, who grants what, and what evidence they expect to see is entirely local.
The other difference is the word supervised. This is public-road testing with a safety driver, the same bar we cleared in Sweden rather than the driverless one I am working to now. It is the lower of the two bars and it is still a serious one: a truck on a public road, other people around it, and a written argument for why that is acceptable that somebody in an authority has to accept.