GM - EXCLUSIVE: Dawn Project's Dan O'Dowd Warns Tesla's 'Terrible' FSD Could Be Banned Blames Musk For Coordinated Online Attacks | Benzinga
Dan O’Dowd, CEO of Green Hills Software and founder of the Dawn Project, is well-known among Tesla and electric vehicle enthusiasts, although not always for popular reasons. In an exclusive interview with Benzinga, he shared his views on various topics, including his ongoing social media clash with Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk and his mission to enhance software safety.
The FSD Problem: Contrary to what one might expect, O’Dowd has been an avid Tesla vehicle driver for the past 13 years. His family also embraces the electric automaker, with two original Roadsters in his possession, a Tesla Model S driven by his wife, and two Model 3s used by the Dawn project for their experiments.
The Dawn Project’s primary objective is to promote safer software across various applications, including electric vehicles. However, within the electric vehicle community, it is most recognized for advocating a ban on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software.
O’Dowd even ran for Senate in 2022, personally spending millions of dollars on a national advertising campaign aimed at what he called Tesla’s "unbelievably bad” self-driving technology.
He didn’t hold back in his criticism of Tesla’s FSD, stating, “In about every 10 miles, it does something dumb. At least every few hours, it will try to kill you.”
As part of their testing, O’Dowd’s team discovered a flaw in Tesla’s driver monitoring system, which is designed to ensure that the driver remains attentive to the road while FSD is active. The system failed to detect various scenarios, such as the driver wearing sunglasses, looking out the window, sleeping, or even being absent from the driver’s seat, O’Dowd said.
Tesla did not respond to Benzinga’s request for comments.
“It couldn’t tell there was nobody. Then we put a teddy bear in there and we put balloons in there, all sorts of different things in the driver’s seat. It never complains, even though it’s supposed to complain unless there’s a person there watching the road,” O’Dowd said.