Sweden's transport authority recommended voting against Tesla's Full Self-Driving approval in Europe unless the company disables the system's speeding function, following a Reuters investigation that found Tesla presented inflated and methodologically flawed safety statistics to regulators in the Netherlands and Sweden.
Sweden's Transport Authority recommended voting against Tesla Inc.'s Full Self-Driving approval in Europe unless the automaker disables the system's speeding function, the latest blow to the company's regulatory push after a Reuters investigation found it presented misleading safety data to European authorities.
"The Swedish Transport Agency recommends voting against Tesla FSD (supervised) in Europe unless Tesla disables the system's speeding function," a spokesperson for the agency said Thursday, according to a statement reported by Chinese financial media Caixin. The recommendation carries weight as Sweden is among the European Union member states whose vote will determine whether FSD receives bloc-wide approval.
The Swedish position follows a Reuters investigation published June 15 that found Tesla presented inflated safety statistics to regulators in the Netherlands and Sweden as part of its campaign to secure European approval. The company claimed its FSD-equipped vehicles travel more than seven times farther between crashes than the average U.S. human driver and could have potentially saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries — figures independent traffic-safety researchers called highly misleading.
"The figures are self-produced, which makes it difficult to find correlation with the authorities' accident statistics," said Stein-Helge Mundal of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, responding to Tesla drivers who had cited the company's safety data in urging swift FSD approval.
Tesla's methodology compared airbag-deployment crashes in FSD-equipped vehicles against a U.S. crash rate covering all severity levels, including far less serious incidents that do not trigger airbags. The company also benchmarked its vehicles against the average U.S. car, which is significantly older and lacks modern safety features that reduce crash rates regardless of whether FSD is active. The 32,000-lives-saved claim rests on the unrealistic assumption that every U.S. vehicle, including freight trucks and motorcycles, would be replaced by a Tesla running FSD.
Regulatory Pushback Mounts
The Dutch road authority RDW approved FSD in April after 18 months of testing and is now pursuing EU-wide approval on Tesla's behalf. RDW told Reuters it "does not rely on marketing claims or external statistics" and performs its own testing and verification, declining to say whether it assessed Tesla's U.S. safety data. Five countries — the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark and Belgium — have approved FSD so far, all resting substantially on RDW's original type-approval.
The pan-EU approval process requires a vote clearing 55 percent of member states and 65 percent of the EU population, thresholds that effectively require sign-off from Germany, France or Italy. None has moved toward approval, and all three have raised concerns about the adequacy of Tesla's safety data for European road conditions. The European Commission's committee is not expected to vote before October at the earliest.
Tesla policy manager Ivan Komusanac wrote to Swedish regulators in April, attaching a slide presentation that displayed the exaggerated safety claims. The European Transport Safety Council said it was "certainly concerned" and called for any safety claims to be independently verified by a qualified researcher before regulators act on them.
What's at Stake for Tesla
Tesla has positioned FSD approval as central to its European sales recovery after a 28 percent market collapse across the region in 2025, as protests over Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk's political activities dented demand. Chinese EV makers are steadily gaining market share in Europe, making FSD approval a competitive necessity.
The Swedish recommendation adds to a growing list of regulatory headwinds. The EU AI Act requires pre-deployment documentation for every over-the-air update, creating a compliance burden that clashes with Tesla's iterative release model. GDPR adds further friction over data collection practices. If major markets like Germany, France or Italy follow Sweden's lead, Tesla could face a prolonged approval timeline that delays a key revenue driver in a region where it can ill afford further setbacks.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
