Tesla has submitted self-produced safety data to regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands as it sought European approval for its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system, according to Reuters.
The news agency said independent road-safety researchers regarded the material as misleading.
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A Reuters review published last month said Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and other company leaders had increasingly pointed over the past year to figures they said showed FSD was up to ten times safer than human drivers.
Reuters said its examination found that several of the comparisons behind those claims were flawed and overstated the system’s safety record.
The agency also reported that Tesla shared the disputed figures with some European regulators while seeking broader approval for FSD in a region where the carmaker is trying to recover market share.
Tesla approached RDW, the Dutch road regulator, in late 2024 to begin the approval process.
In a letter to RDW in November 2024, Tesla linked to its safety report and said “increased usage” of FSD “leads to safer roads.”
Tesla sells FSD as a monthly subscription. The system can operate the vehicle in some circumstances, but the driver must remain attentive.
After more than a year of testing and discussions, RDW approved FSD for use in the Netherlands in April.
The Dutch regulator is now seeking EU-wide approval on Tesla’s behalf.
RDW declined to comment on the issues identified by Reuters in Tesla’s safety statistics.
In a statement, the agency said it “does not rely on marketing claims or external statistics” when making decisions and conducts its own “tests, analyses and verifications” of the system on public roads and test tracks.
It did not say whether it had assessed Tesla’s US safety data.
RDW also said Tesla “collected a lot of data” during testing and that the regulator “validated, tested and audited all of this data.”
The agency did not specify what data had been collected or what it measured.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment, Reuters said.
Soon after the Dutch decision was announced on 10 April, Tesla policy manager Ivan Komusanac emailed Swedish regulators seeking similar approval.
Reuters said he attached a presentation that repeated the claim that Teslas using FSD could travel more than seven times farther between crashes than the average US human driver.
The presentation also said FSD could potentially have saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries.
Researchers cited by Reuters said those figures were highly misleading.
They said the calculations relied on the assumption that every vehicle in the US, including freight trucks and motorcycles, would be replaced by an FSD-equipped Tesla, and that every Tesla would be at least seven times safer than the vehicle it replaced.
Reuters also found that Tesla compared crashes in FSD-operated Teslas that triggered airbag deployment with a US crash rate for all vehicles that includes many less severe accidents.
It also said Tesla compared its vehicles with the average US vehicle, which is significantly older than the average Tesla.
According to Reuters, that affects the comparison because newer vehicles generally include more advanced safety features.
Anders Eriksson, an investigator at the Swedish Transport Agency, declined to comment on the data Tesla submitted.
He said Swedish regulators “look beyond headline figures” and that any assessment of such a system would not be based “solely on aggregated safety claims, but on the overall evidence presented.”
The regulator did not answer Reuters’ questions on what other evidence Tesla had provided.
Dudley Curtis, a spokesperson for the European Transport Safety Council, said his organisation was “certainly concerned” that Tesla had presented “unreliable safety data” from the United States to Swedish regulators.
He said that if Tesla wanted 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.”
