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In its efforts to unafraid European support of its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system, Tesla has presented self-published information statistic to regulators successful Sweden and the Netherlands that autarkic traffic-safety researchers person said magnitude to misleading marketing.
A Reuters introspection published past period recovered that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and different leaders implicit the past twelvemonth person progressively cited statistic they accidental beryllium its FSD driver-assistance diagnostic is up to 10 times safer than quality drivers. But the quality agency’s reappraisal recovered respective invalid information comparisons underlying Tesla’s statistic that exaggerated its safety claims.
Tesla has presented the inflated information information to immoderate European regulators, according to correspondence obtained by Reuters done nationalist records requests, arsenic the EV shaper seeks wider support of FSD successful a portion wherever it is trying to regain marketplace share.
Tesla approached RDW, the Dutch roadworthy regulator, successful precocious 2024 to statesman the FSD support process. In a November 2024 missive to RDW, Tesla provided a nexus to its information study and claimed “increased usage” of FSD “leads to safer roads.” Tesla charges a monthly subscription for FSD, which tin thrust itself nether definite circumstances but requires the quality operator to wage attention.
After much than a twelvemonth of investigating and discussions with Tesla, RDW successful April approved FSD for usage successful the Netherlands. The Dutch regulator is present seeking EU-wide support connected behalf of Tesla.
RDW declined to remark connected the issues Reuters identified with Tesla’s information statistics, but the bureau said successful a connection that it “does not trust connected marketing claims oregon outer statistics” to marque decisions and performs its ain “tests, analyses and verifications” of the strategy connected nationalist roads and trial tracks. The bureau did not accidental whether it assessed Tesla’s U.S. information statistics.
RDW said Tesla “collected a batch of data” during investigating and the bureau “validated, tested and audited each of this data.” RDW did not accidental what benignant of information Tesla collected oregon what it measured.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
Soon aft the Dutch announced the determination connected April 10, a Tesla argumentation manager, Ivan Komusanac, wrote an email to Swedish regulators asking for akin FSD approval. He attached a descent presumption displaying the exaggerated assertion that Teslas utilizing FSD tin question much than 7 times farther betwixt crashes than the mean U.S. quality driver.
The presumption besides claimed FSD could person perchance saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 cardinal injuries.
Researchers interviewed by Reuters said those figures are highly misleading due to the fact that they are based connected the unrealistic presumption that each U.S. vehicle, including freight trucks and crash-prone motorcycles, would beryllium replaced by an FSD-enabled Tesla car – and that each Tesla car is, successful fact, astatine slightest 7 times safer than the 1 it replaces.
The Reuters introspection besides recovered Tesla exaggerates the technology’s information by comparing a complaint of crashes successful FSD-piloted Teslas that triggered airbag deployments to a U.S. clang complaint for each vehicles that includes acold less-severe accidents. The institution besides compares its cars to the mean U.S. conveyance – which is overmuch older than the mean Tesla. That distorts the results due to the fact that automakers person gradually introduced caller information features that trim crashes.
Anders Eriksson, an researcher astatine the Swedish Transport Agency, declined to remark connected the data Tesla provided, but added that Swedish regulators “look beyond header figures” and that immoderate appraisal of specified a strategy would not beryllium based “solely connected aggregated information claims, but connected the wide grounds presented.”
The regulator did not reply Reuters’ questions astir what different grounds Tesla provided.
Dudley Curtis, a spokesperson for the watchdog radical European Transport Safety Council, said his organisation is “certainly concerned” that Tesla presented “unreliable information data” from the United States to regulators successful Sweden, aft Reuters told the radical astir the correspondence.
He added that if Tesla wants to marque information claims, they should “give the information to a university, person it independently verified by a qualified researcher, and past let’s talk.”
Tesla has said FSD support successful Europe is cardinal to conveyance income maturation successful the region. The EV shaper is inactive trying to regain marketplace stock aft income plummeted past twelvemonth amid protests implicit Musk’s governmental activities, including his clasp of far-right European governmental parties.
Failing to unafraid support could marque it harder for Tesla to vie in a portion wherever Chinese EV makers are steadily making inroads.
In the coming months, representatives of 55% of subordinate states that marque up 65% of the bloc’s colonisation indispensable ballot “yes” for FSD to go ineligible passim the EU.
In the meantime, idiosyncratic subordinate states tin approve the exertion connected their own. A regulator successful Greece, which said past period the state aims to o.k. FSD, cited information “from the different broadside of the Atlantic” that showed “this strategy yet leads to a precise important driblet successful accidents.”
The Greek transport ministry declined to reply questions astir whether the information it cited was from Tesla’s information report.
Several Tesla drivers wrote to Norwegian roadworthy regulators citing Tesla’s conveyance information study past autumn. One argued the exertion is “significantly safer than mean manual driving,” with the imaginable to “reduce postulation accidents by up to 90% and frankincense prevention lives connected Norwegian roads.”
Stein-Helge Mundal of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration responded to several Tesla enthusiasts, saying Tesla’s figures “are self-produced,” which makes it “difficult to find correlation with the authorities’ mishap statistics.”
