Dan O’Dowd Takes His Campaign Against FSD To The Super Bowl

Tesla received a serious blow to its reputation yet again in Sunday's Super Bowl with an ad funded by the Safety advocacy group, The Dawn Project, highlighting all the technical shortcomings and road safety concerns of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system.

This campaign targets the NHTSA and the DMV to ban FSD models until all the safety defects are fixed.

California tech entrepreneur Dan O'Dowd has already invested millions in his Campaign to get Tesla's Self-Driving System banned. But he took it to a whole new level with an ad that broadcasted to millions of football fans in DC and a few state capitals such as Austin, Atlanta, Albany, Sacramento, and Tallahassee.

The 30-second ad features a montage of a malfunctioning Tesla car ignoring the do not enter sign", hitting a baby on the stroller, driving on the wrong side of the road, rushing into oncoming traffic, driving past a school bus with its stop lights on, hitting a child in a school crosswalk and more.

The Dawn Project believes that Tesla's subpar engineering and deceptive marketing that has led people to believe that it can drive on autopilot without any input from the driver is a serious threat to public safety on roads.

Tesla's FSD Technology

Tesla's FSD technology is nowhere near perfect. The model isn't even fully self-driving. It can certainly perform a few automated driving tasks, but it's still not safe to have the car running around with a driver. That's what Dan O'Dowd's biggest concern is-Why is Tesla marketed as an FSD car? After all, there have been several reports of accidents happening on autopilot.

Tesla continues to focus on features and marketing gimmicks, not fixing critical safety defects.Dan O'Dowd

Dan O'Dowd is also the CEO of Green Hill software, a company working on operating systems for embedded safety and security systems and its own FSD model. In competition with Tesla, Dan O'Dowd also ran a full-page ad in The New York Times last year claiming that Tesla's FSD faces critical technical issues every 8 minutes.

Another ad launched by The Dawn Project last summer, which showed a Tesla car hitting four different child-sized mannequins during a test drive, was met with a cease-and-desist letter from Tesla, refuting all their claims and questioning the Dawn Project's methodology.

Tesla lawyers and supporters got together, calling the tests fraudulent and stating that Dan O'Dowd's motive was his competitive gain from these defamatory campaigns.

Although Tesla is yet to release an official response to the Super Bowl ad, CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter and replied to a tweet showing the ad with a Rolling on the Floor Laughing emoji.

Tesla has also released the latest FDS model to 400,000 people in North America, reigniting safety concerns about its autopilot technology. Last month's Tesla engineer revealed the 2016 demo of the company's self-driving model was actually staged.

Meanwhile, Dan O'Dowd remains undeterred in his campaign. Along with the controversial Super Bowl ad, he will also run a few full-page ads on Politico and a series of additional TV ads in Washington DC to have Tesla's FSD model banned until the safety issues are investigated and fixed.

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