Tesla Seeks to Keep FSD Safety Data Confidential; European Regulators Refuse

The Dutch Vehicle Authority (RDW) approved Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system for use in the Netherlands in April 2024 and has been promoting its adoption across the European Union. According to email records dating back to late 2024, Tesla requested that RDW keep all documents related to FSD safety assessments confidential, citing the need to protect trade secrets. Emails from April 2025 show Tesla further asked RDW to confirm it would “never” disclose any documents related to the FSD system. RDW stated that its decision not to release the assessment information was not due to Tesla’s request but based on its own judgment to safeguard Tesla’s commercial confidentiality. RDW emphasized that it did not rely on data provided by Tesla when approving FSD and conducted “extensive testing” of the technology itself. A June 2024 report revealed that Tesla had submitted U.S.-based FSD safety data to multiple EU regulators, including RDW. This data exaggerated FSD’s safety performance by comparing the airbag-deployment crash rate of FSD-equipped vehicles against the federal crash rate for all vehicles—including minor incidents. Additionally, Tesla compared its vehicles against the overall U.S. vehicle fleet, which has an average age exceeding 12 years, without clarifying that newer vehicles inherently offer improved safety over older ones. Besides the Netherlands, regulatory authorities in six other European countries—including Germany, Denmark, and Norway—also indicated they would not make FSD test data public, including information shared with them by RDW. Professor Oliver Carsten, a road safety expert at the University of Leeds, and Frank Mutze of the European Transport Safety Council both argued that the testing process and results should be made public in the interest of transparency and public accountability.