The self-described billionaire founder and chief executive of Green Hills Software, Dan O’Dowd, is running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate and wants to ban Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta system.
The California tech mogul has launched an advertising campaign hitting out at the controversial semi-autonomous driving system. The first advertisement, dubbed Unsafe at Any Speed, is a compilation of clips of Tesla vehicles with the FSD beta making mistakes, incorrect turns, and almost causing collisions.
“This campaign is about public safety,” O’Dowd said in a statement to Auto News. “The potential of self-driving car technology is important. If we get this right, we’ll save billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. But Tesla has put tens of thousands of cars on the street with deeply flawed Full Self-Driving software that endangers other drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists. We need to get Tesla’s 60,000 cars with defective Full Self-Driving software off the road immediately.”
Watch Also: Hilariously Poor Tesla Full Self Driving Performance In Boston Highlights Its Weaknesses
During a recent interview with Politico, O’Dowd said this was a single-issue campaign for him and said he will not talk about anything other than Tesla and how the country’s power grids and water treatment plants are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Some individuals close to O’Dowd say he is running purely to hurt Tesla.
O’Dowd added that he will drop out of the race for a seat in the U.S. Senate if his campaign leads to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta being taken off the road.
Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving technology has led to a number of investigations in the United States. In February, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration started to investigate 416,000 Tesla vehicles that could inadvertently apply the brakes while driving at highway speeds with the driver assistance system enabled. Tesla also recently recalled 50,000 vehicles with its Full Self-Driving system because they would allow them to make a “rolling stop” at certain intersections.
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