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Dan O’Dowd, a California entrepreneur, is running for Senate on a one-problem platform: Tesla’s autonomous driving system.
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By Blake Hounshell
“$1 trillion Ponzi scheme. “
“Deep flaws. “
“Insecure. “
TV ads for Dan O’Dowd, a software billionaire running for a Democrat in the California Senate, are typical crusade ads. Overall, they all focus on a single topic: Tesla’s automated driving software. Not for his supposed opponent, Senator Alex. Padilla, the incumbent Democrat.
The slogan of O’Dowd’s crusade is “Making computers for humanity. “Tesla’s computers, he says, are not.
“The challenge in the last five or ten years is to take everything that counts in our lives and upload it to computers,” O’Dowd said in an interview. , hospitals: everything has been put on computers that have been loaded with everything. “
He added: “And a lot of what has been used to do this is of very poor quality. “
O’Dowd’s initial target, he said, is Tesla’s full autonomous driving software, which he says has never been allowed on the road.
“The software that drives the cars that millions of people will have deserves to be our maximum productivity software, the ultimate software designed and thoroughly tested,” he said. “Instead, we’re literally the worst software. “
O’Dowd also ran a paid ad in a print edition of the New York Times, titled “Don’t Be a Tesla Crash Test Dummy. “The announcement promotes The Dawn Project, O’Dowd highlights his experience as a software engineer for projects. such as the Boeing 787 and the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet.
Some of O’Dowd’s critics have questioned the motives for his anti-Tesla campaign. Automakers use their company’s software in various parts and systems, adding automated driving systems.
For Democrats, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, is an attractive political career.
In recent weeks, Musk has shared his unsolicited brain on politics, loose speech, “cancel culture,” his “unconditional litigation department” and anything else that comes to mind on Twitter. He denounced the Democratic Party as the party of “division and hatred” and said he would now “vote Republican. “
Musk’s participation in the public debate has cost him dearly. Tesla’s inventory value has fallen about $400 since news broke in early April that it had acquired a stake in Twitter, which it has since agreed to buy.
Tesla responded to a request for comment for this article. On its website, the company claims that its fully autonomous driving formula requires “active driving force monitoring” and “makes the vehicle autonomous. “
But Musk has advised otherwise. ” I’m very confident that the car will drive on its own for greater reliability than a human this year,” he said in January 2021. “This is a very big problem. “
When I asked O’Dowd why he chose the unorthodox direction of running for office, rather than creating a nonprofit and simply raising the factor in the public arena, he said he had already taken that approach.
“I’ve tried almost everything,” he said. I tried to move on to the government, to the regulators, to the politicians, to them. “
“I’ve been giving speeches for seven years, feeling pretty lonely,” he said. But now that his crusade against Tesla has gained widespread media coverage, he added, “I don’t feel so alone. “
If the state of California or some other legal authority decrees that Tesla’s self-driving software is not in public use, it “will shut up,” he said.
But for now, O’Dowd is willing to spend “whatever it takes” for his purpose of taking it off the market, he said. “A total series of other commercials are being prepared. “
“I have no budget,” he said in an unbiased tone.
O’Dowd is fully self-financing his crusade. He’s already spent about $3. 5 million on ads, far more than any other candidate in the race. Its crusade manager is Jon Blair, a veteran Democratic strategist who in the past helped elect Gina Raimondo, the former governor of Rhode Island.
It also hired Mark Putnam, a Democratic ad author whose company has become known for making steamy biographical videos for candidates, adding ads for Amy McGrath and M. J. Hegar, who helped propel them into the national spotlight.
Putnam’s ads for O’Dowd feature many features that have made him one of the most sought-after artistic minds in his field: emotional urgency, first-person testimonials, and compelling imagery. For a non-traditional crusade theme, they are surprising.
Putnam’s most recent ad, the one accusing Musk of running a “Ponzi scheme,” is about two minutes long, a normal leniency for top campaigns.
But O’Dowd’s operation is not like peak campaigns. It does not employ an official pollster, it has commissioned surveys. He does not hold election rallies or walking ropes, he has held meetings with small teams of voters, interest teams and elected officials to voice his concerns.
O’Dowd benefits from federal regulations that require issuers to offer significant discounts to qualified applicants for public office. higher rates.
But there’s nothing wrong with what he’s doing, crusade law experts said.
“It is not legally new to conduct a crusade on a single factor, even when that factor is hyper-concentrated,” said Adav Noti, vice president and general suggestion of the Campaign Legal Center. “The law is agnostic as to what applicants decide on to focus on. “
The number one will take office on June 7. Because of California’s unique election laws, under which the two most sensible qualify for the general election, it’s possible that O’Dowd will come face-to-face with Padilla in the fall.
O’Dowd doesn’t say it explicitly, but he doesn’t exactly seek to win.
“I’m going to limit myself very conscientiously to those issues,” he said. And I’m going to tell people, vote for me if you think that’s the biggest problem. “
O’Dowd insisted that his company, Green Hills Software, is a competitor to Tesla.
“We don’t make driverless cars,” he said, adding that some automakers use their software on some low-level components. “It’s none of our business. “
Green Hills highlights its experience in the manufacture of specialized software used in automated driving systems. He says his code is used in “hundreds of millions of vehicles. “
The New York Times has reported extensively on the shortcomings of Musk’s push for fully autonomous cars, in a recent documentary.
In February, Tesla removed 54,000 of its cars to disable a feature of its software that allowed cars to make rolling stops in certain cases. There is every commitment to documenting deaths involving Teslas, including those in which motive force assist functions have been shown to be involved.
When we spoke in April expired, O’Dowd said he hadn’t spoken to Musk about his considerations, but not for lack of trying. “I made 3 or 4 efforts to do it through mutual friends,” O’Dowd. said. ” Trust me, he knows who I am. He knows what I’m doing. And he’s not interested. “
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There’s a little more freedom for the first girl in a way that there isn’t for the president. From a photographic perspective, it was fun to watch her interact with the boys and meet other early girls and see some of their personality.
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Is there anything you think we’re missing?We would love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes. com.
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