Dutch Collective Action Against Tesla's Full Self-Driving HW3 Claims Reaches 7,000 Owners with Law Firm Support

Summary

A Dutch collective legal action against Tesla regarding unfulfilled Full Self-Driving promises for Hardware 3 vehicles has grown to nearly 7,000 verified participants and secured backing from Kennedy Van der Laan, one of the Netherlands' leading law firms. The initiative, which launched in April 2026, argues that Tesla represented HW3 as capable of full self-driving but has failed to deliver on this core promise.

Regulatory documents obtained via Freedom of Information requests reveal that Tesla never actually submitted Hardware 3 for Full Self-Driving approval to the Dutch road authority (RDW), contradicting any narrative that regulators rejected HW3. Instead, Tesla's own application in November 2024 was exclusively for HW4 hardware, and the RDW confirmed in writing that HW3 was never even submitted for assessment. The claim seeks refunds for FSD packages costing up to €6,400 and damages reflecting the depreciation of vehicle value due to broken promises.

The action comes amid mounting pressure on Tesla from multiple directions, including a Reuters investigation revealing that Tesla presented misleading Full Self-Driving safety statistics to European regulators (overstating safety by roughly a factor of three), and Tesla's own admission in Q1 2026 earnings that HW3 cannot achieve unsupervised FSD due to memory bandwidth limitations that existed from the hardware's inception. A specialized litigation funder is supporting the case, meaning participants face no upfront costs.

• Tesla admitted in Q1 2026 that HW3 cannot achieve unsupervised FSD due to hardware bandwidth limitations that were fundamental to the product's design
• The case comes as Tesla faces regulatory scrutiny over misleading FSD safety claims presented to European authorities

Editorial Opinion

Tesla's Hardware 3 saga represents a cautionary tale of autonomous vehicle promises unmoored from regulatory reality. The revelation that Tesla never even attempted to certify HW3 for Full Self-Driving—while consumers paid premium prices for vehicles marketed with that capability—exposes the risks of separating marketing aspirations from verifiable technical achievement. The Dutch collective action may establish important precedent for holding companies accountable when they misrepresent AI product capabilities, particularly in domains like autonomous driving where safety claims carry significant public trust implications.