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Billionaire tech entrepreneur Dan O’Dowd used yesterday’s Super Bowl as an opportunity to push his controversial campaign against rival Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The ‘Dawn Project’ founder, who ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate to represent California last year, has spent millions trying to discredit Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, which gives cars partial autonomy.
During yesterday’s Super Bowl commercials, O’Dowd bankrolled a 30-second clip that claimed to show flaws in Tesla’s software while a narrator claims the car “will hit a kid in the school crosswalk, swerve sharply into oncoming traffic, you will hit a baby in a stroller.” , [and] go straight past the stopped school buses.’
The ad, broadcast in Washington, D.C., Austin, Tallahassee, Albany, Atlanta and Sacramento, reportedly cost $598,000, A Dawn Project spokesperson. said CNN.
A frame from the posted ad shows a Tesla car from the outside running over a mannequin.
Dan O’Dowd, pictured here, is a billionaire businessman, like Tesla’s Elon Musk.
On February 11, O’Dowd shared the Super Bowl video on his Twitter account, which received more than seven million views.
But viewers soon responded with reader-added comments, a new feature of the social media platform added by Musk.
The footnote correctly noted that O’Dowd owns green hills softwarea company that produces automated driving systems to rival those of Tesla.
Twitter users also pointed to a previous smear campaign against Tesla’s FSD software that was debunked.
Full Mars Electric Vehicle News Channel found FSD’s Beta stops for children.
The shot of the car hitting the dummy is only taken from the outside, raising suspicions that the FSD was not involved.
In August of last year, Dan O’Dowd Media’s YouTube account posted an ad claiming to have “conclusively demonstrated” that Tesla’s FSD did not avoid or slow down a child dummy in plain sight.
Critics later showed that the full autonomous driving mode was not activated, as The Dawn Project had stated on its website.
tesla then sent a cease and desist letter to The Dawn Project for the announcement that the FSD would ‘kill the children’.
Tesla claimed the images were defamatory and misrepresented the capabilities of its advanced driver assistance system.
O’Dowd responded on Twitter: “Master con man Musk threatens to sue me over TV ad.”
“Turns out Mr. Free Speech Absolutist is just another whiner hiding behind his lawyer skirt.”
A still from the ad, showing the car apparently running a stop sign attached to a school bus.
The car’s full self-driving system again seems to ignore stop signs and road closed signs.
As of January 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had investigated a total of 35 accidents, resulting in 19 deaths, in which Tesla’s FSD was likely used.
Tesla’s Model S, 3, X, and Y are among those with the lowest overall probability of injury of all vehicles tested by the government’s NCAP safety program.
Manufacturers have criticized the term ‘Full Self Driving’ as misleading.
Tesla itself has noted that while the FSD can perform some automated driving tasks, drivers need to remain vigilant in the event of malfunctions or events that the system cannot yet handle.
The company has been sued for falsely marketing the capabilities of its automated systems.
No vehicle for sale today is fully autonomous or self-driving.
However, Tesla drivers have been caught sleeping behind the wheel while driving on major highways.
Tesla’s system has received a lot of attention since the company was the first to the market of an autopilot mode, launched in 2014.
the company is now preparing to launch its new Autopilot 4.0 hardware upgrade, according to a filing with European regulators.
Tesla stopped responding to inquiries from the press in 2020 and could not be reached for comment.