Tesla Pressured Dutch Regulator to Ease FSD Review, Emails Show

Tesla spent months lobbying the Dutch vehicle regulator RDW to scale back its review of "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)," according to emails obtained by Reuters. The automaker’s efforts included disputing a €365,000 bill for regulatory costs, which preceded the regulator’s offer to reduce the scope of its assessment.

What Happened

The correspondence reveals a pattern of Tesla pushing back against standard regulatory procedures in Europe. In November 2024, a Tesla staffer told RDW that starting vehicle tests by the end of that month was "mission critical for our leadership," noting that leadership would "measure the goodwill" of the regulator based on meeting that deadline. Unlike in the US, European rules require automakers to cover the regulator's costs for these reviews. In April 2025, Tesla labeled RDW’s €365,000 invoice for five months of work an "extremely high cost" and withheld payment pending an hour-by-hour accounting of employee time. Tesla also objected to paying for five RDW staffers to visit Giga Berlin. A week after the invoice dispute, an RDW staffer invited Tesla to suggest how the regulator "might adjust or reduce the required effort moving forward." Additional concessions included RDW agreeing to monitor some tests remotely rather than sending inspectors, declining to "dive too deep in technical details" regarding over-the-air software updates, and agreeing to provide Tesla with advance notice of test specifics and safety driver names.

Why It Matters

The Dutch approval serves as the foundation for Tesla’s FSD rollout across the European Union, where eight countries now allow the system and a bloc-wide vote is expected as early as December. However, the independence of this review is under scrutiny. RDW stated that its engagement "does not compromise the independence or thoroughness of our assessment," but it has redacted large parts of the emails and refuses to publish its own FSD test data, citing Tesla trade secrets. Meanwhile, Tesla’s safety claims face skepticism from experts. Seven traffic-safety researchers reviewed by Reuters found that Tesla’s evidence dashboard relied on a sample size too small to draw causal conclusions about crash prevention, using "surrogates" like hard braking instead of actual crash data. Despite this, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have publicly argued that delaying approval "will cost lives," a claim former NHTSA statistician Marco Benedetti called "nonsensical." The pressure campaign also mobilized Tesla owners, who flooded regulators in countries like Sweden and Norway with emails echoing these safety claims, prompting one Norwegian official to warn that regulators would need significant effort to address "misled consumers."

The Bottom Line

Tesla’s European sales dropped 28% last year, making FSD a critical differentiator against competitors like BYD and Volkswagen. While France has shifted toward supporting approval following a call between Musk and the transport minister, major markets like Germany, Italy, and Spain have not yet signed on. The upcoming EU vote will determine if the bloc accepts a regulatory process that Tesla influenced through financial disputes and public pressure, or if it demands more transparent, independent data before granting a continent-wide green light.