Tesla pushes EU regulators on Full Self-Driving as safety claims draw scrutiny

Tesla wants Europe to let its Full Self-Driving system loose on the whole continent. Europe, so far, has preferred to take the scenic route. The company is leading a lobbying push for broader EU approval of FSD. Its central safety argument, a claim that the software produces seven times fewer crashes than the average US driver, is facing pushback from independent researchers who call it misleading. Where the approval stands As of October 2026, Tesla’s FSD has national approvals in eight EU member countries. Together, those markets cover approximately 12.6% of the EU population. Most of the momentum traces back to the Netherlands. On April 10, 2026, the Dutch road authority RDW granted Tesla’s FSD a provisional EU type approval after 18 months of testing, which included over 1,000 tests and 1.76 million kilometers of driving. That Dutch decision matters more than its size suggests. Under mutual recognition, other countries can accept the approval without running their own independent tests. The bigger prize is approval across the entire bloc. That decision runs through the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles, or TCMV, which has been moving slowly. A TCMV meeting expected on Octobe...