Tesla pushed the Dutch vehicle authority on cost, speed and test procedure while it was assessing Full Self-Driving (Supervised), according to emails Reuters published on 8 October 2026. Every later European approval has leaned on the RDW's decision of 10 April 2026. This is the third Reuters investigation into it, after June's report on Tesla's safety statistics and August's on the sealed safety review.
The €365,000 bill
In an April 2025 email, a Tesla employee balked at the RDW's breakdown of €365,000 in costs for testing permits, technical work and other services over the five months to March 2025. Tesla complained of an "extremely high cost" and said it would withhold payment until it received a "granular" accounting, including the hours worked and hourly cost of every RDW employee on the project.
A week later, an RDW staffer invited Tesla to "share any suggestions on how we might adjust or reduce the required effort moving forward."
What else Tesla pushed for
In November 2024, Tesla wanted testing to start by the end of that month: "Keep in mind that this is mission critical for our leadership."
| When | Tesla's request | The RDW's response |
|---|---|---|
| December 2024 | Accept Tesla's own test reports instead of an RDW inspector travelling to witness tests | Proposed monitoring part of the tests remotely |
| May 2025 meeting at Gigafactory Berlin | Do not bill Tesla for five RDW staff to travel | Only two staff members' expenses would be billed |
| Date not given | Advance notice of which tests would run, plus names and roles of the RDW's safety drivers and passengers | Agreed two days later to provide the names once the drivers signed off |
In one partially redacted email, an RDW staffer assured Tesla that the regulator did not want to "dive too deep in technical details" and did not "question the quality and process for OTA's."
The RDW's answer
The RDW told Reuters it "assesses driver assistance systems from all manufacturers objectively and independently". It said contact with a manufacturer "does not compromise the independence or thoroughness of our assessment", which it describes as an "extensive independent investigation" on closed tracks and public roads. Tesla did not respond to Reuters' questions.
The safety case and the owners' campaign
For Reuters, seven traffic-safety researchers reviewed the "evidence dashboard" Tesla says it shared with EU regulators in April. All seven said it offers no evidence for the central claim of Tesla's lobbying: that FSD prevents fatal crashes. The FSD sample covered only "tens or hundreds of thousands" of miles, too few to compare crash rates. Instead of crashes, it used "surrogates" such as horn honking, automatic emergency braking and hard cornering. Tesla's own fine print says the comparisons cannot be read as "causal estimates".
In November 2025, Elon Musk told shareholders that "pressure from our customers in Europe to push the regulators to approve would be appreciated." That month, Stein-Helge Mundal, a chief engineer at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, wrote to counterparts in Sweden, Finland and Denmark that Tesla was "advising their customers to contact RDW and their national authorities". He told Reuters: "We do not approve systems because they are popular, and we do not reject them because they are controversial."
Why it matters for owners
FSD (Supervised) is approved in eight European countries. An EU-wide approval needs regulators from 55% of member states, representing 65% of the population. Nothing changes for drivers using it today. The emails show the RDW giving ground on logistics and cost. The RDW says the substance of its assessment was unaffected, and because that assessment stays confidential, nobody outside the RDW and Tesla can check.