A new report accuses Tesla of using “misleading” data regarding the safety of its Full Self-Driving system to get it approved for use in Europe. The company’s own safety statistics, which were sent to some regulators in Europe, have been called little more than marketing materials, and not an accurate depiction of the capabilities of the system or its positive effect on safety. That’s a hefty claim; here’s why regulators are upset.
Sketchy Safety Data Sent To Euro Regulators
Tesla Model Y with FSD (Supervised) being driven in metro Detroit, April 2026.Tom Murphy / CarBuzz / Valnet
Last month, Reuters published an examination of the safety claims made by Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk. Both have been claiming for quite some time that the FSD driver assistance feature is up to 10 times safer than human drivers.
That report involved Tesla driving monitors called data labelers, who said that the system continued to struggle and fail on very basic maneuvers. It also addressed Tesla’s claim of being 10 times safer, showing that Tesla was using indirect comparisons by stacking its collision figures against vehicles with no driver assists at all and by comparing data from its vehicles that involved airbag deployments against industry-wide data that included a much wider range of crashes.
Now, using public records requests, Reuters has found correspondence between Tesla and European regulators that uses that same data. In late 2024, Tesla sent a letter to Dutch road regulator RDW claiming that “increased usage” of the FSD system “leads to safer roads” and included that disputed safety report.
After a year of discussions, RDW approved FSD for use in the Netherlands. Now the government agency is seeking EU-wide approval on Tesla’s behalf.
The agency declined to comment to Reuters on the issues with the safety statistics, or that it assessed them. It said instead that the agency “does not rely on marketing claims or external statistics.”
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Shortly after Dutch approval, Tesla policy manager Ivan Komusanac reached out to regulators in Sweden. Reuters reports Tesla was looking for FSD approval there, and that Komusanac used a presentation showing the same contested claims as well as claims that the system could have saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries.
Safety Watchdog Groups ‘Concerned’ With Tesla Data
The 2024 Tesla Robotaxi, or Cybercab, will soon start a comprehensive testing program in Austin, Texas.Tesla
Reuters interviewed traffic safety researchers who found problems with those figures as well. The researchers said that the data assumed every vehicle in the US would be replaced by a Tesla with FSD, including motorcycles and heavy trucks. It also assumed that every Tesla was at least seven times safer than the vehicle it replaced.
Swedish Transport Agency investigator Anders Eriksson declined to comment to Reuters on the Tesla-provided date, but said that regulators “look beyond headline figures.” Its assessment would be based “on the overall evidence provided,” he said, without elaborating on what additional evidence it had seen.
The European Transport Safety Council, a watchdog group, is concerned with the Tesla claims. Spokesperson Dudley Curtis told Reuters that the group was “certainly concerned” that Tesla was presenting what he called “unreliable safety data” to regulators.
In order for FSD to become approved across the EU, it has to get approval from the 55% of countries that make 65% of its population. It can also gain approval in individual countries. Not all countries are buying Tesla’s data, though. The report says that Stein-Helge Mundal of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration responded to some Tesla fans pushing the data, saying that the self-published figures make it “difficult to find correlation with the authorities’ accident statistics.”
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CarBuzz has reached out to Tesla for comment on the report.
CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters:
The Tesla Model 3 Performance. Fast, but also leaning towards the heavy side.Tesla
Self-driving has been Tesla’s primetime feature since it was first announced in 2013. Despite Musk making and breaking claims of it being months or weeks away from happening dozens of times, there are still zero Tesla vehicles capable of unsupervised full self-driving, and just a small number can perform robotaxi service in very limited areas of a couple of US cities.
Convincing the EU the feature is ready is a huge step. One that Musk absolutely needs to achieve if he wants to get his record-smashing pay package. With more than $1 trillion on the line for Musk and Tesla, using questionable figures to push a safety feature could have even larger impacts on the drivers, passengers, and road users affected.
Source: Reuters
