Dutch Renters Can Now Book a Tesla With Full Self-Driving by the Hour, No Ownership Required

MyWheels put its first Full Self-Driving equipped Tesla Model 3 into paid rental service in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, on August 27, 2026. It's the first time a European car-sharing company has offered Tesla's supervised autonomy feature to ordinary renters instead of owners, according to a press release from parent company The Sharing Group.

MyWheels CEO Laurens van de Vijver told NL Times the company is running a controlled experiment to see two things: how people who've never used FSD before behave with it, and whether it lowers damage claims across a fleet that turns over dozens of times a week.

That second point is the real business case. A private Tesla owner learns FSD's quirks over months. A renter might switch it on for the first time in traffic on a Tuesday afternoon. If claims drop, van de Vijver scales it. If they rise, according to Tech Times, "the experiment ends and the Teslas go back to standard mode."

The Fine Print Matters Here

Only a small test group can book the FSD-equipped car right now, and each renter has to complete a short instructional course first. Renters who turn FSD on remain fully and legally responsible for the vehicle at all times, a condition the Dutch Vehicle Authority, the RDW, built into its April 10, 2026 approval of the system.

This is not driverless. Van de Vijver himself put it plainly to NL Times: "You can switch it on and then let it drive without having to intervene. But you are expected to be able to drive the car if necessary." A renter who's driven the car for ten minutes is legally in the same seat as an owner who's driven it for two years. MyWheels is treating this as a data-collection project rather than a rollout.

Van de Vijver wants at least 50 FSD-equipped Teslas in the fleet by the end of 2026. His actual ambition goes further: an app-summoned car that drives itself to your door, completes the trip, then autonomously heads to the next renter with no idle time in between. He told NL Times that could mean fewer cars parked on Amsterdam's canals and a possible alternative to thin regional bus service outside major cities. He's not shy about the timeline, either, dismissing the common decade-out estimate for driverless mobility: "I really suspect that we will see this within five years." That's van de Vijver's own projection, not an RDW finding or an independent forecast, and it should be read as such.

Europe Is Running an Older Version Than the US

Tesla just merged FSD into its 2026 Summer Update on both sides of the Atlantic, and the two regions are nowhere close to equal, according to autoevolution. American customers are now on FSD V14.3.8. European vehicles, including the ones MyWheels just put into shared service, are still running V14.2.2, the same build the RDW approved back in April.

The gap exists because of regulation, not Tesla's preference. In the US, Tesla pushes new FSD builds to customer cars whenever it wants. In Europe, autoevolution reports, Tesla has to submit every new build for separate approval before it reaches customer vehicles, which slows releases considerably. European regulators have made a deliberate tradeoff: they'd rather review each version than hand Tesla a blank check for continuous updates. That's a legitimate safety-first argument, and it's also the reason Dutch renters are driving software that's already one full point release behind what's rolling out in the States.

The Broader Field Isn't Standing Still

MyWheels isn't the only autonomy story moving in Europe right now. NL Times reports Waymo is testing self-driving cars in London with the stated goal of eventually removing the driver altogether, and Uber began offering bookable autonomous rides in Zagreb this month, though a human supervisor is still behind the wheel there too. Uber says it's bringing thousands of robotaxis to European cities more broadly.

Does letting first-time users engage FSD actually reduce at-fault damage claims, or does unfamiliarity with the system introduce new kinds of incidents that a seasoned owner would avoid? Van de Vijver says that's exactly what the small initial rollout is designed to measure. The answer will decide whether the fleet grows past 50 vehicles or the FSD experiment quietly ends.