Super Bowl Ad Savages Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" Tech

Electric carmaker Tesla will face a hit on Super Bowl Sunday (Monday, Feb. 13, 2023, in Manila), when an ad will play showing the alleged dangers of its Full Self-Driving technology, Matt McFarland and Ramishah Maruf reported for CNN.

Photo Insert: The ad alleges that Tesla's Full Self-Driving tech is endangering the public.

The commercial, which will be aired in Washington, DC, Austin, Tallahassee, Albany, Atlanta, and Sacramento does not paint Tesla in the best light. The ad is part of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign by The Dawn Project.

Its founder, Dan O’Dowd, is a California tech CEO who has dedicated millions of his own money to the cause. The ad cost $598,000, a Dawn Project spokesperson told CNN.

It shows a Tesla Model 3, which allegedly has the Full Self-Driving mode turned on, running over a child-sized dummy on a school crosswalk, and then a fake baby in a stroller, in a series of tests by the Dawn Project.

In the ad, the car swerves into oncoming traffic, zooms past stopped school buses, and cruises through “do not enter” signs.

“Tesla’s Full Self-Driving is endangering the public,” the ad said. “With deceptive marketing and woefully inept engineering.”

The Dawn Project says it wants to make computer-controlled systems safer for humanity, shooting its own videos as tests of Tesla’s alleged design flaws. In August, O’Dowd published a video showing a Tesla plowing into child-sized mannequins.

Some Tesla fans posted their own videos in defense, using their own dummies or even their own children – YouTube has taken down several test videos involving actual children, citing safety risks.

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