A California tech entrepreneur is paying more than half a million dollars for Super Bowl ads criticizing Tesla for not disabling its Autopilot technology outside the conditions for which it was designed, a problem highlighted by a Washington Post investigation this past fall and later cited in a recall of virtually every U.S. Tesla equipped with Autopilot, around 2 million vehicles.
In one, a 17-year-old was severely injured when a Tesla struck him at 45 mph as he disembarked a school bus in North Carolina that had its stop sign out and warning lights flashing.
The ad makes reference to prior Dawn Project videos depicting the alleged failure of Teslas to react to child-size mannequins in the road — including last year’s Super Bowl commercial, which aired weeks before the North Carolina crash.
The other ad set to air during this year’s game shows the crash that killed a 50-year-old father in 2019 when his Tesla drove under a semi-truck trailer and the moment a Tesla blew through a stop sign and blinking lights on a rural Florida road as it barreled toward a parked vehicle and flung a young couple into the air, killing one of them and leaving the other severely injured — footage first published by The Post.
The company is facing concerns over stagnating revenue, mounting worries about its capacity to deliver long-promised “Full Self-Driving” technology, and Wall Street hand-wringing over the persistent distraction of its mercurial CEO.
Musk has asked for a larger stake in the company as a condition for “growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics,” saying that without 25 percent control he “would prefer to build products outside of Tesla.” But some investors have not given the idea a warm reception.
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