In the long term this will cause EU auto makers to get their self driving tech from US companies (either through licensing or partnerships). VW has already partnered with Ford. Most of the other european auto makers are getting their tech from Aptiv. When it comes to self driving, none of the EU car manufacturers can compete with Waymo, GM (Cruise), or Tesla. Even when they manage to build really cool stuff, it gets shut down by regulators.[1]
Maybe EU auto makers just wait, meaning work on something, until they can put something on the market that works. After watching some hours of youtube footage I can say one thing for sure: Teslas' FSD does not.
By that time the US companies will have technology with a track record of real world use. The EU companies will have an easier time buying that tech than building their own.
This is analogous to banning airplanes until they can be proven safe to fly in. The countries that don’t ban them will lose more lives early on, but they’ll have a technological advantage. The place where this analogy breaks down is that hundreds of people are killed by human driven cars every day. Every year cars kill 120,000 people in the US & Europe. If we can develop and deploy this technology a year sooner, we can save tens of thousands of lives.
I think only the Tesla approach wouldn't fly in Europe, but trained drivers should hold, last year there was some announcement by Renault and Waymo for something in Paris though hard to tell what it actually meant:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/11/waymo-and-renault-to-explo...
Stuff like that is only possible in the US. Would be unthinkable in the EU. Maybe in UJK but you know, they are no longer ...