What We’re Reading

• Dan O’Dowd Pays For Super Bowl Ad Directed Against Tesla’s FSD Beta (Inside EVs, February 14, 2023)

  The Dawn Project and its founder, anti-Tesla activist Dan O’Dowd, made headlines last year by running ad campaigns questioning the safety of Tesla’s technology, including one campaign purporting to show a Tesla in FSD mode failing to stop for a child-sized mannequin. That particular ad prompted a cease-and-desist demand from Tesla and various copycat experiments by Tesla fans and critics alike.

  On Sunday, O’Dowd took his efforts up a notch by bringing his message to one of the most coveted and expensive platforms in American advertising: a Super Bowl Ad. The ad “shows video clips of Tesla vehicles making errors such as running over a mannequin meant to represent a child crossing the street, hitting a child in a stroller, failing to stop for a school bus with flashing lights, entering a closed street, swerve into oncoming traffic, and more.” O’Dowd has vowed not to stop with the Super Bowl, promising “a series of television and print ads calling for urgent action over the deployment of Tesla's dangerous Full Self-Driving software on public roads.”

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  O’Dowd’s may be one of the more controversial ads to run during the Super Bowl, but it certainly wasn’t the only one to feature automotive technology. For a more complete roundup of this year’s Super Bowl car commercials, see here and here.

• The Truth About Insurance Requirements For Autonomous Vehicles in America (Hot Cars, February 11, 2023)

  Is insurance a barrier to the adoption of self-driving technology? The author here believes the answer is “yes,” writing that “the main issue preventing mass adoption isn't the cost to design and produce [AVs] but rather the laws pertaining to insurance and liability in the case of an accident.” Why? His reasons include:

  • While a strong argument could be made for manufacturer liability in the event of an accident, “insurance companies will be hesitant to adopt this position until there is a sufficient amount of case law and claim data involving autonomous vehicles.”

  • Although AVs should eventually lead to fewer accidents and fewer claims, “technological growing pains” could actually increase accidents and claims in the interim “as self-driving vehicles learn to share the road with regular cars and drivers.” Combined with increased repair costs, these factors are likely to raise insurance premiums for AVs, at least for the time being.

  • Current levels of automation make it difficult to allocate fault to the manufacturer; as levels progress to full self-driving, it may be “easier for insurance companies to determine if the owner of the vehicle or the car manufacturer is at fault in a collision.”

  • Gaps in technology lead to reliability concerns, and hesitancy to adopt.

• Tesla’s important Full Self-Driving Beta v11 update is delayed again (Electrek, February 12, 2023)

  UPDATE: As noted in last week’s reading, since Tesla opened Full Self Driving Beta to approximately 400,000 Tesla owners in North America late last year, Elon Musk has repeatedly announced and then delayed the release of a major update to Tesla’s software dubbed FSD Beta v11.  The long-anticipated release of v11 will purportedly finally allow a Tesla vehicle to autonomously drive itself from one destination to another regardless of the ODD by integrating Tesla’s FSD, which operates on city streets and smaller roads, with Autopilot, which is for highway navigation, into a single stack system designed for use in most driving conditions. Although Musk recently tweeted that v11 would be released last week, the deadline came and went without the update.  Most recently, Musk tweeted that v11.3 will roll out this week, although in a limited beta format for use only as a Level 2 system that still requires the driver to remain attentive and ready to take control of the vehicle at all times. Additionally, it is believed that the update, when and if it finally is released, will only be pushed to a select few early beta testers.

  In response to criticism over the repeated release delays, Musk acknowledged that working out the bugs in the update was much more difficult than he or his team anticipated. That being said, Musk has repeatedly beaten the odds and overcome seemingly impossible hurdles in his frontier electrification and automation quests.  We’ll stay tuned.