Tesla Put the Regulator in the Passenger Seat

Morning, droogs. Tesla built a second steering wheel. This one appears to be connected to the regulator.^[1]

A new Reuters investigation says Tesla pushed European regulators to approve Full Self-Driving (Supervised) while publicly blaming bureaucracy for preventable road deaths. The report draws on hundreds of pages of correspondence, company studies and interviews with seven traffic-safety researchers.^[1]

Tesla's public case is simple: FSD is already saving lives, and slow approval is withholding that benefit. Its Europe account said the system was 4.1 times less likely to crash than manual driving and called the safety benefit 'locked behind bureaucracy.'^[2]

The evidence is less cooperative. Tesla's own dashboard says its observational comparisons should not be read as causal estimates and does not control fleet-wide data for traffic density, weather, road conditions, lighting or scenario complexity. Reuters' seven reviewers said the European study could not establish Tesla's central public claim that FSD prevents fatal crashes.^[1][3]

That does not prove FSD is unsafe. It proves the public certainty runs ahead of the evidence. A useful driver-assistance system and a demonstrated reduction in deaths are not interchangeable claims, no matter how many times the second one is posted with urgency.^[1][3]

The process is the uglier part. Reuters reports that Tesla objected to costs, asked to limit or remotely observe some testing and demanded advance approval over certain tests. Dutch regulator RDW sometimes answered in collaborative language and offered to 'adjust or reduce' effort. RDW says its review remained objective, independent and extensive.^[1]

An automaker is supposed to make the safety case. The watchdog is supposed to test it. Once the company starts helping choose how hard the watchdog looks, the dashboard is no longer the only thing under evaluation.^[1]

Nothing says Full Self-Driving like driving the approval process yourself.^[1]