Lithuania and Estonia authorise Tesla FSD with Belgium and Greece fast-tracking

ETSC is concerned about rapid national authorisations of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system following provisional approval by the Dutch type approval authority RDW last month.  ETSC urges all EU Member States to take a precautionary approach. Driver assistance systems will be on the agenda of a European Commission Motor Vehicle Working Group meeting next week, where ETSC hopes to set out its safety concerns.

Following the provisional approval of FSD by the RDW, reported in last month’s Safety Monitor, Lithuania became the first EU Member State to recognise that approval. As a consequence, Tesla owners in Lithuania already have access to the system.  Estonia followed the Lithuanian authorisation today, 29 May.    

In Belgium, Flemish Mobility Minister Annick De Ridder authorised a testing programme of around 5,000 kilometres earlier this month in Flanders, the northern region of the country. 

According to Reuters, Greece’s transport ministry announced on 20 May that it would bring forward a bill to authorise FSD on Greek roads, also via recognition of the Dutch RDW certification.

ETSC has set out its substantive safety concerns about the deployment of Tesla FSD on European roads, in particular human-factor risks such as driver over-reliance on systems that still require active supervision. It has also raised process concerns, including the closed-door working methods of the European Commission’s Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV).

A Reuters investigation published on 28 May has raised new questions about Tesla’s safety claims. The investigation, based on interviews with nine data labellers, a former self-driving engineer, and eleven independent traffic safety researchers, concluded that the safety statistics Tesla publishes in the United States for its US FSD product are built on flawed methodology that inflates the figures. 

Ten of the eleven independent researchers consulted concluded that the published statistics amounted to misleading marketing rather than a serious safety analysis. The variant of FSD approved by the RDW for EU use is not identical to the US product covered by the investigation, so the findings do not speak directly to the European version.