Tesla faces scrutiny over FSD safety data in Europe

In its efforts to secure European approval of its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system, Tesla (TSLA.O) has presented self-published safety statistics to regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands that independent traffic-safety researchers have said amount to misleading marketing, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.

A Reuters examination published last month found that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other leaders over the past year have increasingly cited statistics they say prove its FSD driver-assistance feature is up to 10 times safer than human drivers. However, the news agency’s review found several invalid data comparisons underlying Tesla’s statistics that exaggerated its safety claims.

Tesla has presented the inflated safety data to some European regulators, according to correspondence obtained by Reuters through public records requests, as the EV maker seeks wider approval of FSD in a region where it is trying to regain market share.

Tesla approached RDW, the Dutch road regulator, in late 2024 to begin the FSD approval process.

In a November 2024 letter to RDW, Tesla provided a link to its safety report and claimed that “increased usage” of FSD “leads to safer roads.” Tesla charges a monthly subscription for FSD, which can drive itself under certain circumstances but still requires the human driver to remain attentive.

After more than a year of testing and discussions with Tesla, RDW approved FSD for use in the Netherlands in April. The Dutch regulator is now seeking EU-wide approval on behalf of Tesla.

RDW declined to comment on the issues Reuters identified with Tesla's safety statistics, but the agency stated that it “does not rely on marketing claims or external statistics” when making decisions and instead performs its own “tests, analyses and verifications” of systems on public roads and test tracks. The agency did not say whether it assessed Tesla's U.S. safety statistics.

RDW also said Tesla “collected a lot of data” during testing and that the agency “validated, tested and audited all of this data.” However, it did not specify what kind of data Tesla collected or what it measured.

Shortly after the Dutch announcement on April 10, Tesla policy manager Ivan Komusanac wrote an email to Swedish regulators requesting similar approval for FSD. He attached a slide presentation claiming that Tesla vehicles using FSD can travel more than seven times farther between crashes than the average U.S. human driver.

The presentation also claimed that FSD could have potentially saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries.

Researchers interviewed by Reuters said these figures are highly misleading because they rely on the unrealistic assumption that every U.S. vehicle, including freight trucks and crash-prone motorcycles, would be replaced by an FSD-enabled Tesla, and that every Tesla equipped with FSD is at least seven times safer than the vehicle it replaces.

The Reuters examination also found that Tesla exaggerates FSD safety by comparing crash rates in FSD-piloted Teslas that triggered airbag deployments with a U.S. crash rate for all vehicles, which includes far less-severe accidents. The company also compares its cars to the average U.S. vehicle, which is significantly older than the average Tesla. This distorts results because newer vehicles generally include improved safety features that reduce crash rates.

Anders Eriksson, an investigator at the Swedish Transport Agency, declined to comment on the data Tesla provided, but said that Swedish regulators “look beyond headline figures” and that assessments are not based “solely on aggregated safety claims, but on the overall evidence presented.” The regulator did not answer Reuters’ questions about what other evidence Tesla provided.

Dudley Curtis, a spokesperson for the European Transport Safety Council, said the group is “certainly concerned” that Tesla presented “unreliable safety data” from the United States to Swedish regulators after being informed of the correspondence. He added that if Tesla wants to make safety claims, it should “give the data to a university, have it independently verified by a qualified researcher, and then let’s talk.”

Tesla has said FSD approval in Europe is key to vehicle sales growth in the region. The company is still attempting to regain market share after sales fell sharply last year amid protests over Elon Musk’s political activities, including his support for far-right European political parties.

Failing to secure approval could make it harder for Tesla to compete in a region where Chinese EV makers are steadily increasing their presence.

In the coming months, representatives of 55% of EU member states representing 65% of the bloc’s population must vote “yes” for FSD to become legal throughout the EU.

In the meantime, individual member states can approve the technology independently. A regulator in Greece, which said last month it aims to approve FSD, cited data “from the other side of the Atlantic” suggesting that the system leads to “a very significant drop in accidents.”

News.Az 

By Nijat Babayev