Tesla Touts Full Self-driving during Super Bowl
2023.02.12 14:17
Tesla Touts Full Self-driving during Super Bowl
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – On Super Bowl Sunday, an advertisement highlighting the alleged dangers of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology will air.
The advertisement for Tesla, which will air in Washington, DC, Austin, Tallahassee, Albany, Atlanta, and Sacramento, does not portray the company in a favorable light. The Dawn Project’s multimillion-dollar advertising campaign includes the advertisement. Dan O’Dowd, its founder and chief technology officer, is a failed US Senate candidate from California who has contributed millions of dollars to the cause.
According to a Dawn Project spokesperson, the ad cost $598,000.
In a series of Dawn Project tests, it shows a Tesla Model 3, which is said to be in Full Self-Driving mode, running over a child-sized dummy on a school crosswalk and then a fake baby in a stroller. The vehicle cruises through “do not enter” signs, swerves into oncoming traffic, and passes stopped school buses in the advertisement.
The advertisement stated, “Tesla’s Full Self-Driving is putting the public in danger.” with misleading advertising and shoddy engineering.”
The Dawn Project says it wants to make computer-controlled systems safer for people by testing Tesla’s alleged design flaws in its own videos. O’Dowd released a video in August that showed a Tesla hitting child-sized mannequins. YouTube has taken down several test videos involving actual children, citing safety risks, and some Tesla fans have posted their own videos in defense, using their own children or dummies.
O’Dowd received a cease-and-desist letter from Tesla regarding the video, stating that he and the Dawn Project were “disseminating defamatory information to the public” and “disparaging Tesla’s commercial interests.”
O’Dowd wrote a 1,736-word response to the cease-and-desist letter in which he refuted the claim that his posts were defamatory, defended his tests, and retaliated against Musk and some Tesla supporters.
O’Dowd, whose software was sold to the military, is launching a million-dollar campaign to stop Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature. He’s running ads across the country and making videos to show how Musk’s technology could be dangerous. In addition, he unsuccessfully ran a single-issue campaign for the US Senate.
Full Self-Driving is available to any North American user who wishes to purchase the $15,000 feature, despite the fact that it is officially in beta mode.
CNN inquired for comment, but Tesla did not respond immediately. Despite its widespread deployment, Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system is still officially in a development “beta” program. It is intended to function on city streets in the future. At this point, there is no self-driving vehicle available for purchase.
Full Self-Driving steers the vehicle on city streets but can also stop for traffic signals and make turns, while Autopilot is a suite of driver-assist features.
Tesla asserts that it is unaware of any ongoing government investigation concluding that any wrongdoing occurred and that its Autopilot, with its automated steering designed to maintain a vehicle’s lane, is safer than regular driving.
The reckless use of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software on public roads poses a significant risk to public safety. O’Dowd stated in a statement, “Elon Musk has released software to all Tesla owners in North America that will run down children in school crosswalks, swerve into oncoming traffic, and hit a baby in a stroller.”
In a public filing on January 31, Tesla stated that it “has received requests from the Department of Justice for documents related to Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD features.”
In addition to a number of other NHTSA investigations, federal investigators are looking into a Musk tweet about disabling driver alerts on Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” driver assist system.
“Users with more than 10,000 miles on FSD Beta should be given the option to turn off the steering wheel nag,” Musk wrote in a December 31 tweet to @WholeMarsBlog.
Musk responded, “Agreed, update coming in January.”
As a first step toward requesting a recall, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration made the announcement in the summer that it was expanding its investigation into Tesla to an “engineering analysis.” Following reports that Autopilot-engaged vehicles were colliding with emergency vehicles stopped at the scene of previous collisions, NHTSA initiated an investigation into Tesla’s driver-assist technology.
Green Hills Software’s CEO and founder is O’Dowd. According to the Washington Post, some of Musk’s backers contend that O’Dowd has a conflict of interest because one of his customers is Intel-owned Mobileye, which manufactures a computer chip for running driver-assisted software.
