Tremendous Bowl: Tech CEO purchases ad to warn about Tesla
Dan O’Dowd thinks your child’s safety is value over a half million dollars of his money.
Sandwiched involving the usually irreverent and usually ultraexpensive Super Bowl adverts this year was a industrial from his have Dawn Venture, calling for the instant ban of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) attribute.
The 30-second advertisement, which his organization verified to CNN charge just about $600,000 to run, is the latest attack in opposition to Elon Musk in a yearlong campaign by the Inexperienced Hills Software program CEO to provoke public opposition to FSD.
“I am striving to eliminate the worst, most incompetently created, designed, and tested automotive product on the industry,” he mentioned in a tweet on Sunday, calling for the U.S. government to mandate the deactivation of Tesla’s FSD until eventually all supposed problems are mounted.
Tesla did not respond to an inquiry from Fortune about the Dawn Project’s Super Bowl ad.
In a tweet on Sunday, even so, Musk responded by proclaiming the ad would basically benefit his carmaker.
“This will considerably increase general public awareness that a Tesla can push itself (supervised for now),” he wrote.
O’Dowd burst onto the scene in January of last year, rapidly becoming the most vocal critic of FSD, eclipsing figures like Snow Bull Capital CEO Taylor Ogan, an investor in Tesla rival BYD.
He even ran for the U.S. Senate on a single challenge: obtaining supposedly unsafe Tesla FSD cars and trucks off the road.
Following having out a complete-webpage advert in opposition to Tesla in the New York Times, he adopted up in August with videos supposedly proving that Teslas “indiscriminately mow down” small children. Tesla speedily responded with a cease and desist letter requesting he consider down the video, to which O’Dowd replied he can “afford not to be intimidated by these threats.”
The authenticity of the video clips is drastically disputed, and Tesla-helpful web page Electrek promises to have conclusively debunked the promises—an assertion that O’Dowd carries on to deny.
“To eliminate all doubt that these significant security flaws are actual, we invite Elon Musk, the National Freeway Targeted traffic Safety Administration, [and] the media to witness a general public demonstration,” the Inexperienced Hills Software package CEO argued on Saturday.
Musk has moved the goalposts
The Super Bowl ad does, however, substantiate a person point: Tesla’s FSD characteristic is one particular of the most divisive concerns bordering the carmaker’s know-how.
Last week, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak argued he experienced been cheated by Tesla, arguing that the company had overpromised and underdelivered on its pledge to transform a automobile into a thoroughly automated robotaxi at the touch of a button.
Wozniak’s responses arrived only weeks just after it emerged that Elon Musk had in fact staged a vital 2016 video upon which he primarily based his claim for leading the industry in self-driving technologies.
Very last yr Tesla finally expanded its so-known as FSD beta to all U.S. and Canadian prospects who purchased the program package deal, which currently charges $15,000.
Yet it continues to be a considerably cry from what was promised. Instead of a fully automated auto, it stays practically nothing additional than an aid system—albeit an highly developed one—that calls for frequent supervision by a licensed driver driving the wheel.
Even Electrek found in Oct that Musk had shifted the goalposts, with FSD trapped in “beta” progress for an indefinite period of time. Now 400,000 buyers are tests the application.
By comparison, tech firms like Cruise and Waymo present actual robotaxi solutions in minimal geofenced parts wherever the environment have been meticulously mapped out in large definition digital maps.
Later this calendar year, Mercedes-Benz expects to grow to be the initially carmaker to industry a rudimentary drive pilot in the U.S., which will see drivers in Nevada legally permitted to choose their eyes off the highway. It has currently been advertising this technological innovation in Germany since previous May possibly.
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