A dispute over a €365,000 invoice prompted the Dutch vehicle regulator RDW to scale back parts of its safety review of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised system, according to internal correspondence obtained by Reuters.
The revelations raise fresh questions about the transparency and independence of Europe’s approval process, as Tesla pushes regulators to clear its controversial driver-assistance technology for wider use.
The Dutch regulator has already granted temporary approval, with seven other countries, including Belgium, following suit. Meanwhile, major markets such as Germany and France appear to be softening their stance ahead of a potentially decisive European approval decision expected in December.
“Mission critical”
The Reuters investigation builds on hundreds of pages of documents obtained through public records requests in seven European countries. The findings tell a story in which a year-long negotiation resulted in RDW gradually shrinking.
The FSD analysis from RDW took one and a half years and builds on hybrid data: partially retrieved from its own testing, partially from data analysis provided by Tesla itself (which was made public after the car maker was pressed).
The RDW ran 13.000 kilometers of real-world testing, basically peanuts in comparison to conventional car makers’ procedures, which involve millions of kilometers.
The document that Reuters read into dates from November 2024. A Tesla employee tells the Dutch type-approval authority that starting vehicle tests that month is “mission critical” for the company’s leadership. He added that top management will read the regulator’s goodwill in meeting that deadline.
High invoice
It shows how keen the car maker is on obtaining approval, as a broader roll-out of the technology in Europe would give it a head start over both Chinese and local manufacturers. Mercedes does run the more advanced Level 3 in Germany, but in a much stricter confined context.
Fast forward to April 2025. Tesla disputes the RDW’s invoice for 365,000 euros for five months of review work. The car maker calls it “extremely high”. It withholds payment until it gets an hourly breakdown of who did what.
Not too deep into OTA
One week after that complaint, an RDW employee invited Tesla to propose how the authority could reduce the effort involved. The Dutch regulator subsequently allowed Tesla to use its own test reports instead of an on-site inspector.
It also agreed not to dig too deep into over-the-air updates. On top of that, it shared the exact test list and safety driver names with the company in advance. It seems the RDW watered down the bill over a disagreement.
In an official reaction, RDW maintains that its independence was never compromised. However, large portions of the very correspondence that would prove it were edited. Furthermore, the RDW refrains from publishing its own test results publicly.
It sticks to its previous agreement with Tesla, which demanded disclosure on the grounds of trade secrets.
Reuters previously reported that Tesla is trying to win over regulators with its own, but contested, data. Experts claim that these contain methodological gaps.
Measuring surrogates
Tesla’s study claims that FSD-equipped cars crash up to 10 times less often than manually driven cars. Seven traffic-safety researchers who examined the paper found it doesn’t hold up: the FSD sample is tiny compared with the hundreds of millions of manually driven kilometers.
The study also measured surrogates such as braking and honking rather than actual crashes in the database of cars not equipped with FSD.
Besides that, the FSD cars were piloted by Tesla’s own professional test drivers rather than ordinary owners. Most tellingly, Tesla’s own fine print concedes that these comparisons cannot support any causal claim.
Winning over politicians
Meanwhile, Tesla’s lobbying is winning over more and more politicians. While France’s tests showed the onboard camera didn’t monitor driver attention precisely enough, French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot rejected the approval. But after a call with Elon Musk, he acknowledged that he remained hopeful for the near future.
In talks with German Transport Minister Steffen Bilger, Tesla said it is willing to change the name from FSD (Supervised) to Assisted Driving to facilitate European-wide approval.
On top of that, it will adapt the Offset Speeding limit from 50% to 10%. Sweden and Finland oppose any setting above the legal limit, as it doesn’t comply with UN regulations which Europe has adopted.
Musk publicly asked his followers to pressure European regulators, and a Tesla account on X steered owners straight to RDW’s contact form.
