TSLA
Tesla’s Europe push gets a little too cozy
Reuters says Tesla spent months leaning on European regulators to speed up approval of Full Self-Driving Supervised, including nudging the Dutch RDW to make the review cheaper and less intense. That’s the regulatory equivalent of asking the teacher if you can grade your own homework.
The safety pitch vs. the paperwork
After France raised safety concerns, Elon Musk took to X with the dramatic line that delaying FSD approval in France “will cost lives.” Tesla, for its part, says the system is safer than human driving and points to broader European data it says shows FSD-equipped cars had a collision rate 4.1 times lower than manually driven Teslas.
But Reuters says outside researchers weren’t exactly sold on the company’s earlier safety study, and the whole thing now has a faint whiff of “trust us, we did the science.” RDW says its approval came after more than 3,000 hours of testing and 1,000-plus test runs, and that the assessment was independent.
Why investors should care
Tesla shares were down about 1.3% in early Wednesday trading, which is hardly a cliff dive, but it does show the market is still grading Tesla on more than just car deliveries. If Europe keeps widening the FSD lane, that’s another feather in Tesla’s autonomy cap. If regulators decide Tesla’s been a bit too pushy, the company could be stuck in the slow lane for longer.
Big picture: Tesla’s not just selling cars anymore — it’s selling a future where the software gets to do the driving, and regulators are deciding how fast that future arrives.