Hundreds of pages of correspondence between Tesla and European regulatory authorities reveal that the company pressured the Dutch vehicle registration authority RDW to reduce the effort required to review the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system, according to an investigation published by Reuters. The case is significant because Dutch approval has become the basis for Tesla’s efforts to make the system available in other European countries.
The correspondence shows that Tesla described beginning vehicle testing before the end of November 2024 as a “critically important task” for the company’s leadership, and that it would measure the regulator’s “good faith” based on whether that deadline was met. In April 2025, Tesla challenged a €365,000 invoice for five months of RDW work and demanded a breakdown of the hours worked by each employee. It also challenged the costs of five employees’ visit to the Giga Berlin factory.
Procedural Concessions Raise Questions About Independence
After Tesla objected to the invoice, RDW invited the company to propose ways to modify or reduce the effort required in the future. According to the documents, the changes included accepting remote monitoring of some tests instead of requiring an authority inspector to be present, and RDW agreeing to receive advance notice of the tests and the names of the safety drivers. Tesla also pushed to narrow the discussion related to over-the-air software updates, and an RDW employee responded that he did not want to go too deeply into the technical details and did not question the quality of the update process.
RDW says its communication with manufacturers does not affect the independence or comprehensiveness of the assessment. But large sections of the correspondence were redacted, and the authority has not published its FSD test data, citing Tesla’s trade secrets. In practice, this means that other European countries are being asked to rely on a review whose underlying data the public cannot scrutinize.
Safety Data Do Not Prove Claims of Saving Lives
Tesla provided European Union member states with a “dashboard” of safety data, then published a European study that it said was among the main pieces of evidence supporting Dutch approval. However, seven traffic-safety researchers reviewed the study’s methodology for Reuters and concluded that the driving sample was far too small for comparison with the hundreds of millions of miles Tesla vehicles have driven manually in Europe.
Instead of relying on crashes, the study measured substitute indicators such as horn use, turn signals, hard braking and sudden turns. The vehicles were also driven by professional Tesla test drivers, not ordinary owners. Tesla’s own notes state that the comparisons cannot be interpreted as causal estimates. Therefore, the study does not prove that FSD prevents crashes or deaths, despite the company’s use of language about lives that could be saved.
The European Approval Process
Eight European Union countries currently allow the system: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium, Estonia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Croatia. Approval at the EU level requires the consent of 15 countries representing 65% of the bloc’s population, with a vote expected in December at the earliest. Germany, Italy and Spain have not yet backed the system, while Sweden wants to reject it unless Tesla removes the ability to set speeds above the legal limit.
In France, Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said in July that his country could not support FSD, and Elon Musk responded that delaying approval would cost lives. Two months later, Tabarot posted a picture of a call with Musk and described it as a constructive exchange, referring to work on changes that could enable France to support approval.
Why Does This News Matter?
The documents do not prove that FSD is unsafe in Europe, but they weaken the image of an independent and fully auditable approval process. They also reveal that the pressure did not come from the company alone: Tesla encouraged its vehicle owners to contact regulatory authorities, resulting in numerous messages repeating claims about saving lives and holding specific officials responsible for deaths.
Open questions concern regulators’ ability to verify actual customer data, whether RDW will publish its test results, and whether major countries will request this data before the vote. Publishing customer driving data and making the results available to independent researchers would give the debate a stronger basis than substitute indicators and general claims.