Dutch regulator to seek EU approval for Tesla’s self-driving software

By Toby Sterling and Akash Sriram

April 13 (Reuters) – Dutch vehicle authority RDW has notified the European Commission of its plan to seek European Union-wide approval for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software system, the regulator’s general manager of type approvals told Reuters on Monday.

Bernd van Nieuwenhoven emphasised that the FSD system, despite its name, is driver assistance software rather than a full self-driving car. The system can steer, brake and ​accelerate under the supervision of a human without their hands on the steering wheel.

Van Nieuwenhoven said he was confident it could be used safely on all roads in the Netherlands, including Amsterdam, where electric cars share narrow streets with motorized vehicles, bikes and e-bikes.

“If it is good enough for the Netherlands, it is good enough for Europe,” Van Nieuwenhoven said in an interview on the vetting process for the technology following the announcement on Friday nL1N40T0XG that it had been approved in the Netherlands, a European first.

He said he could not give a timeline for when the Netherlands will formally request EU-wide approval, a process that will require majority assent from a European Commission committee. 

In the meanwhile, individual countries may decide on their own account to allow the technology, using the Dutch approval as a reference point.

The software ‌is already ⁠available as a subscription for U.S. drivers, where Tesla is facing consumer lawsuits nL1N3UB0FD and federal investigations nL6N3YH0S4 after crashes nL4N4070ZH and reports of traffic violations.

Van Nieuwenhoven said the Dutch-European version of the full self-driving software will not be strictly comparable with the U.S. version due to the differing regulatory process. 

Differences include stricter monitoring of whether drivers are paying attention to the road, and a need for any software update to the system to be checked with the RDW ahead of time.

Tesla is the most popular ​maker of electric cars in the ​Netherlands, with around 100,000 Model ⁠3 and Model Ys combined on its roads that would be eligible for FSD software.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Editing by Sahal Muhammed and Jan Harvey)