Today, a Tesla ad full of lies will play during the Superbowl, but it isn’t coming from Tesla.
After years of resistance, Tesla has recently started to advertise. The automaker has significantly increased its advertising efforts with more ads on social media and video ads on YouTube.
Although Tesla hasn’t yet jumped into Super Bowl advertising, ads featuring Tesla are scheduled to air during Super Bowl LVIII. “The Dawn Project,” backed by Dan O’Dowd, has invested several million dollars in an ad campaign targeting Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta program with the goal of having it banned from public roads in the U.S.
O’Dowd, a billionaire and founder of Green Hills Software, initiated the campaign as a single-issue effort focused on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving program.
Despite a cease-and-desist letter from Tesla, the Dawn Project persisted with the campaign, even launching an anti-Tesla ad at the Super Bowl last year. Now, they are back at it again with a fresh batch of ads.
While there are valid criticisms of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta program, the fearmongering approach of the Dawn Project is potentially libelous. Their claims about the program causing fatal accidents are unsubstantiated, with many attributing the accidents to driver inattention rather than the FSD Beta features themselves.
One valid criticism is Tesla’s driver monitoring, which is lacking compared to the competition and is not sufficient to ensure drivers are paying attention.
It’s important to note that O’Dowd’s intentions may not be entirely altruistic, given that his company, Green Hills Software, is a competitor to Tesla Autopilot. This could be perceived as a conflict of interest.