BELGIUM SINT-TRUIDEN TESLA SYNCHRONIZED LIGHT SHOW

Picture of a world record attempt for the highest number of Tesla vehicles putting on a perfectly synchronized light show in Europe (Natacha Freisen/Getty Images)

What the first FSD approval in Europe means for Tesla

Elon Musk has blamed the lack of Full Self-Driving approval for struggling sales on the continent.

Rani Molla

4/13/26 9:08AM

On Friday, Dutch regulators approved a version of Tesla’s supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, making the Netherlands the first country in Europe where the technology can be used. Tesla has long argued the driver assistance system is key to its future growth.

The regulators said they are also submitting an application to expand approval across the European Union.

CEO Elon Musk has blamed the lack of FSD approval for making Europe its “weakest market.”

“It’s worth noting that we do not actually yet have approval for supervised FSD in Europe,” Musk said during an earnings call last year. “So our sales in Europe, we think, will improve significantly once we are able to give customers the same experience that they have in the US.” At the World Economic Forum in January, Musk said he expected European approval in February. It’s now April, and that process is only just beginning.

That doesn’t mean Tesla’s European sales will immediately rebound. The Netherlands is a relatively small market for Tesla, which itself sells a modest share of its cars in Europe. Tesla sold about 16,700 cars in the Netherlands in 2025, out of roughly 240,000 across Europe and 1.6 million globally.

There are also key differences between the US and European versions of the technology. Dutch regulators said the US version is “not comparable” to the one approved in Europe, which comes with stricter safety requirements and closer driver monitoring.

Upcoming sales data will test whether access to FSD is actually what’s holding Tesla back in Europe. But it’s worth noting that the company’s global deliveries have declined for two straight years, even as the company has offered FSD in its largest market, the US.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5