Tesla Used Misleading Data to Secure European FSD Approvals

A major investigation by Reuters has revealed that Tesla presented inflated and methodologically flawed safety data to European regulators to secure approval for its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) technology. The findings come as several European countries — including the Netherlands, Belgium, Lithuania, and Denmark — have already approved FSD for use on their roads, with the Dutch road authority (RDW) now seeking EU-wide approval on Tesla’s behalf.

The Statistical Flaw at the Heart of Tesla’s Claims

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other executives have repeatedly claimed that FSD is “10 times safer” than human drivers. But according to the Reuters investigation, this figure is built on a deeply misleading statistical comparison. Tesla compared crashes where airbags deployed in its own vehicles — a high-severity threshold — against federal data that includes all crashes requiring a tow truck, a far less severe metric. The federal data Tesla used already included airbag-deployment crashes as a separate category, meaning the company could have made a valid apples-to-apples comparison but chose not to.

When University of Michigan researcher Marco Benedetti performed the correct comparison, the claimed safety margin dropped from “10 times safer” to roughly three times safer. Even that figure is unreliable, as Electrek noted, because Tesla also compared its vehicles (average age 4.1 years) to the overall U.S. fleet (average age 12.8 years). Newer vehicles across all brands have better safety features, further distorting the results.

Ten of 11 independent traffic-safety researchers who reviewed Tesla’s methodology for Reuters called it “misleading marketing” rather than a serious safety study. Carnegie Mellon professor Phil Koopman likened the comparison to saying: “My jet airplane is faster than your World War II bomber. Yeah, so, what’s your point?”

The ‘32,000 Lives Saved’ Claim

Among the most egregious assertions Tesla presented to regulators was the claim that FSD could have saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries. This figure assumes that every vehicle in the United States — including freight trucks and motorcycles — would be replaced by an FSD-enabled Tesla. Independent researchers described the assumption as absurd.

Direct Lobbying of European Regulators

Documents obtained by Reuters through public records requests show that Tesla directly presented these inflated statistics to government regulators. In a November 2024 letter to RDW, the Dutch road authority, Tesla provided a link to its safety report and claimed that “increased usage” of FSD “leads to safer roads.” After more than a year of testing, RDW approved FSD in the Netherlands in April 2026.

Shortly after the Dutch approval, Tesla policy manager Ivan Komusanac emailed Swedish regulators with a slide presentation displaying the exaggerated claim that FSD can travel more than seven times farther between crashes than the average U.S. human driver.

According to VRT NWS, the Flemish minister of mobility, Annick De Ridder, approved FSD in Belgium after 5,000 kilometers of local testing. Her office stated that “the data were not simply taken from Tesla” and that independent testing was conducted.

Regulator Responses: A Mixed Picture

European regulators responded differently to Tesla’s claims. RDW told Reuters it “does not rely on marketing claims or external statistics” and performs its own “tests, analyses and verifications” on public roads and test tracks. However, the agency did not say whether it assessed the validity of Tesla’s U.S. safety statistics.

Anders Eriksson, an investigator at the Swedish Transport Agency, said regulators “look beyond headline figures” but did not specify what other evidence Tesla provided. Norway’s response was more direct: Stein-Helge Mundal of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration noted that Tesla’s figures “are self-produced,” making it “difficult to find correlation with the authorities’ accident statistics.”

Dudley Curtis of the European Transport Safety Council said that if Tesla wants to make safety claims, the company should “give the data to a university, have it independently verified by a qualified researcher, and then let’s talk.”

Employees Don’t Trust the Technology

Beyond the statistical issues, Reuters interviewed nine former Tesla data labelers — the workers who train the AI system by reviewing video footage from Tesla’s eight exterior cameras. Seven of them said they would not trust FSD to drive them. One said he would not ride in a Tesla robotaxi “if you fucking paid me.” A veteran self-driving engineer who reviewed Tesla crash data for years called the company’s safety claims “bullshit” and warned: “Definitely, don’t trust Elon on this.”

The data labelers described regularly seeing FSD fail at basic tasks: pulling over for emergency vehicles, giving motorcyclists enough space, braking on freeway off-ramps, and avoiding construction zones. A specialized “trauma team” in Palo Alto focused on near-misses with pedestrians, including FSD-piloted Teslas nearly hitting children and failing to recognize pedestrians in crosswalks.

The Robotaxi Mapping Contradiction

One of the most significant findings is that Tesla extensively mapped its robotaxi operating zones before public launches — directly contradicting Musk’s central claim that Tesla’s approach does not require the “laborious local mapping” used by rivals like Waymo. For weeks before the October 2024 Cybercab unveiling, staff tested prototypes nightly. Data labelers spent hundreds of hours annotating curbs and road markings. Nearly a year after the Austin robotaxi launch in June 2025, Tesla still operates only about 20 unsupervised robotaxis there, traversing a limited and carefully mapped zone.

Implications and What’s Next

The revelations raise serious questions about the integrity of Tesla’s safety claims and the European approval process. For EU-wide approval, representatives of 55% of member states making up 65% of the bloc’s population must vote “yes.” Tesla has stated that FSD approval in Europe is key to regaining market share in a region where sales have been challenged by Chinese EV maker BYD.

Meanwhile, U.S. regulators are also scrutinizing the technology. NHTSA currently has four active investigations into FSD and Autopilot, including probes into FSD running red lights and whether Tesla’s 2023 Autopilot recall was sufficient. Tesla was also hit with a $243 million verdict after an Autopilot crash in Florida killed a 22-year-old woman.

Tesla did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. The question now facing European regulators is whether the Reuters findings will prompt any country to reconsider or revoke FSD approval — and whether the EU-wide approval process can proceed with confidence in Tesla’s self-reported data.

As Steven Latré, AI lead at the Imec research center, told VRT NWS: “With the safety of cars and the introduction of new technology, we should not be careless. The bar should be set very high, and that is not the case here.”