The Dutch vehicle authority RDW (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer) confirmed on March 20, 2026, that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) application is in its final review stage — but the agency stopped well short of committing to any approval date. The statement, published on the RDW’s official website, was a direct response to a post by Tesla Europe’s X account that named a specific date for expected approval. The RDW said it broke with its usual practice of not commenting on manufacturer applications only because of the volume of media inquiries it was receiving.

The agency confirmed that a joint intensive testing program began roughly 18 months ago and that both Tesla and the RDW are now working through the final steps of the review. Inspectors are analyzing all test data and results. A decision will follow once that process is complete. No date was given.

What the RDW Actually Said

The RDW’s full statement is short and deliberate. Tesla’s X post claimed the company is in the “final phase” of the approval process. The RDW confirmed that part: “That is correct, Tesla and the RDW are currently going through the final steps of the assessment process.” What the RDW did not confirm is any specific date for a decision. The agency’s language is careful: inspectors are reviewing all data and test results, and “after completion of this process, a decision will be made on the admission of the FSD Supervised driver assistance system.” Road safety, the RDW stated, is the top priority throughout.

That is a meaningful distinction. Tesla Europe’s X account named April 10 as the expected approval date. The RDW’s statement does not mention April 10, or any date. What it does is confirm the timeline narrative without endorsing the specific milestone Tesla named publicly.

Tesla’s Track Record With Self-Announced European FSD Dates

Tesla naming an expected approval date and a Dutch regulator declining to confirm it is, at this point, a familiar sequence. In November 2025, Tesla’s European account posted on X claiming the RDW had “committed” to granting Netherlands national approval in February 2026. The RDW publicly contradicted that claim within hours, clarified that no commitment had been made, and asked Tesla fans to stop flooding its customer service lines with thank-you messages for an approval that did not exist.

In early March 2026, Elon Musk cited March 20 as the RDW’s communicated target date — while hedging it twice in the same breath with “what I was told” and “hopefully that date remains the same.” March 20 passed without approval. The date then shifted to April 10 in Tesla’s X post, which prompted this latest RDW response.

On the same day as the RDW statement — March 20 — EVXL reported the most substantive progress yet: Tesla said it had completed the final vehicle testing phase and submitted a full documentation package covering UN R-171 requirements and Article 39 exemptions under EU Regulation 2018/858. The RDW’s March 20 statement neither contradicts nor endorses the April 10 date Tesla is projecting.

Eighteen Months of Testing Are Now Under Regulatory Review

The joint Tesla-RDW testing program that began approximately 18 months ago has now fed its results into a formal internal review. According to Tesla’s own figures — unverified by any independent party — the process included over 1.6 million km of FSD (Supervised) driving on EU roads, more than 13,000 customer ride-alongs, and over 4,500 track test scenario executions. The RDW’s inspectors are now going through all of that data before any decision is issued.

The current Netherlands review is running on the existing Article 39 exemption and UN R-171 path — not a new regulatory framework. What did shift in January 2026 is the broader international direction: on January 23, the UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) adopted a draft global regulation replacing prescriptive hardware rules with an outcome-based safety case approach. As we reported in February, Tesla’s camera-only neural network system had never fit the old sensor-fusion rule structure. That UNECE regulation doesn’t take effect until WP.29 votes in June 2026 at the earliest, so it is not the legal instrument enabling what the RDW is doing right now — but it signals that the international regulatory environment is moving toward a structure where Tesla’s approach is no longer the exception. Supervised road testing under the RDW began in February 2026, after months of friction between Tesla and European authorities.

What Approval Would Mean — and What It Would Not

Netherlands approval, when it comes, would cover FSD (Supervised) as a Level 2+ system. Drivers must remain attentive and ready to intervene. Legal and operational responsibility stays with the driver. For European Tesla owners currently limited to Autopilot, it would still represent a large jump in available capability. I’ve used FSD V14 extensively on U.S. roads, and the gap between Enhanced Autopilot and FSD on a complex urban route is large enough to feel like a different product. Whether V14’s behavior translates cleanly to Dutch roads — with their tram tracks, unmarked cycle paths, and right-of-way conventions that differ from U.S. defaults — will only become clear once real-world post-approval data starts accumulating.

Netherlands approval also does not automatically extend to Germany, France, or Spain. Tesla has projected EU-wide recognition could follow during summer 2026. That timeline is Tesla’s own projection, not a commitment from the European Commission or any national authority. Given that the UNECE framework enabling a cleaner legal path for other countries doesn’t take effect until June 2026 at the earliest, summer 2026 EU-wide availability looks optimistic.

EVXL’s Take

I’ve been tracking this saga since November 2025, when the RDW first publicly contradicted Tesla’s own X account. What has changed since then is real: the testing phase is complete, documentation is submitted, and the RDW is confirming the final review is underway rather than denying that any meaningful process exists. That is progress.

What has not changed is the dynamic. Tesla names a date. The RDW says nothing about that date. Tesla names another date. This has happened at least three times now. The RDW’s March 20 statement is, in effect, a polite correction: the process is in its final stage, safety is the priority, and the regulator will decide when the review is done — not when Tesla’s social media calendar says so.

The RDW breaking its own rule — it explicitly said it never normally comments on manufacturer applications — is itself telling. The volume of media and public pressure Tesla generates around this process has reached the point where the regulator feels it has to say something just to keep speculation from running further ahead of reality. That is exactly the pressure-through-public-attention strategy Tesla has been running since at least the November 2025 episode, when it asked fans to contact the RDW to thank them for an approval that had not happened.

April 10 may well hold. The documentation is in, the review is active, and the RDW confirmed it is in the final steps rather than the middle of the process. But Tesla’s European FSD timeline has not hit a single self-announced deadline yet. If April 10 slips to May or June, the pattern will be complete rather than broken. The Netherlands will approve FSD (Supervised) before mid-year 2026. The harder question is what comes after: full EU-wide availability by summer 2026, as Tesla projects, would require a pace of national recognitions that no EU country has yet signed up to deliver — and a UNECE framework that isn’t even in force yet.

EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.