Overview
- A Reuters examination published Monday found Tesla gave regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands self‑published safety statistics that independent researchers called misleading.
- Researchers identified specific flaws in Tesla’s comparisons, including using crashes that triggered airbag deployments as the Tesla metric, benchmarking against a broader U.S. crash rate that includes minor accidents, and comparing Teslas to an older average U.S. vehicle fleet.
- A Tesla slide claiming FSD could have saved 32,000 lives relied on the unrealistic assumption that every U.S. vehicle would be replaced by an FSD‑equipped Tesla, a premise researchers said inflates any life‑saving estimate.
- The Dutch road authority RDW says it validated, tested and audited Tesla’s submitted data and carried out its own on‑road and track checks, while Nordic regulators have flagged unresolved issues such as icy‑road performance, speeding tendencies and consumer misunderstanding of the ‘Full Self‑Driving’ name.
- EU authorization is unresolved and could hinge on committee votes this summer and autumn, a result that would determine whether national approvals based on the Dutch decision become legal across the bloc and shape Tesla’s push to regain European sales.