Tesla's FSD Data Faces Growing European Scrutiny

Tesla is facing scrutiny from independent traffic safety researchers and regional watchdogs after public records requests revealed that the electric vehicle manufacturer submitted self-published Full Self-Driving (FSD) safety statistics to regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands that experts describe as misleading.

The data was provided as part of Tesla’s ongoing effort to secure regulatory approval for its FSD driver-assistance system across Europe, where the company is seeking to reverse recent declines in market share.

According to correspondence obtained by Reuters through public records requests, Tesla approached the Dutch road regulator RDW in late 2024 to initiate the formal FSD approval process. In a November 2024 letter to the agency, Tesla included a link to its internal safety report and asserted that increased use of the FSD system "leads to safer roads."

After more than 12 months of testing and discussions, RDW granted national approval for FSD use in the Netherlands in April 2026. The Dutch regulator is now advocating for European Union-wide approval on the automaker’s behalf.

While RDW declined to comment on specific concerns regarding Tesla’s statistical methodology, the agency issued a statement clarifying its evaluation process: "RDW does not rely on marketing claims or external statistics to make decisions and performs its own tests, analyses and verifications of the system on public roads and test tracks."

The regulator added that Tesla "collected a lot of data" during the testing phase and said the agency "validated, tested and audited all of this data." RDW did not disclose which parameters were measured or what specific data was audited.

Shortly after the Dutch approval was finalized on April 10, Tesla policy manager Ivan Komusanac sent an email to the Swedish Transport Agency requesting a similar national endorsement for the FSD system. Attached to the correspondence was a presentation claiming that vehicles operating with FSD can travel more than seven times farther between collisions than the statistical average for human-driven vehicles in the United States.

The presentation also stated that widespread adoption of FSD could have "saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries."

Independent traffic safety researchers interviewed by Reuters challenged those claims, arguing that the methodology behind them is flawed. They noted that the calculations assume every active vehicle in the United States—including commercial trucks and motorcycles—would be replaced by an FSD-enabled Tesla. The model also assumes that every replacement vehicle would be at least seven times safer than the one it replaced.

Analysis of Tesla’s self-reported data found that the company compares crash rates for FSD-guided vehicles that result in airbag deployments with total US crash rates for all vehicles, which include minor, low-severity accidents. In addition, Tesla compares its current fleet with the average U.S. vehicle, which is statistically older and lacks many of the advanced safety technologies introduced over the past decade.

Dudley Curtis, a spokesperson for the European Transport Safety Council, expressed concern over the findings. "If Tesla wants to make safety claims, they should give the data to a university, have it independently verified by a qualified researcher, and then let’s talk," Curtis said.

Regulators in Scandinavia also expressed caution regarding company-generated datasets. Anders Eriksson, an investigator at the Swedish Transport Agency, declined to comment directly on Tesla’s submission but said Swedish authorities "look beyond headline figures." He added that any regulatory assessment would be based "not solely on aggregated safety claims, but on the overall evidence presented."

Similarly, Stein-Helge Mundal of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, who has received numerous inquiries from Tesla owners advocating for rapid FSD adoption, emphasized the government's position on corporate safety metrics. Mundal said Tesla’s figures "are self-produced," making it "difficult to find correlation with the authorities’ accident statistics."

In contrast, a regulatory official in Greece announced last month that the country intends to approve FSD, citing data "from the other side of the Atlantic" that suggested "this system ultimately leads to a very significant drop in accidents." The Greek Transport Ministry declined to confirm whether the data it referenced originated from Tesla’s self-published safety report.

Securing regulatory approval for FSD remains a key component of Tesla’s European business strategy. The automaker is working to reverse a sharp decline in regional sales that followed public protests over CEO Elon Musk’s political activities, including interactions with far-right European political groups. Failure to obtain widespread operating permits could weaken Tesla’s competitive position against Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers such as BYD, which have steadily expanded their presence in the European market.

To gain approval across the European Union, representatives from member states accounting for at least 55% of countries and 65% of the bloc’s total population must vote in favor of the proposal in the coming months. In the meantime, individual member states retain the authority to grant national approvals. In addition to the Netherlands, Lithuania, Belgium and Denmark have already authorized the technology.

Tesla did not issue a statement or respond to multiple requests for comment regarding its regulatory correspondence or its safety reporting methodology.