Billionaire slams 'Tesla Cultists' for praising Robotaxi, says it's 5+ years behind Waymo

The Tesla Robotaxi program has kicked off in Austin, Texas, and reactions are pouring in from all corners of the internet. A select group of investors and influencers have been invited to try the service, which operates within a limited area of South Austin for a price of $4.20. While the vehicles are operating without anyone in the driver's seat, the program has specific rules for this pilot phase, including a human "safety monitor" who rides along in the passenger seat just in case things go sideways.

Of course, the launch did not go unnoticed by Tesla's most vocal and well-funded critic, Dan O'Dowd. O'Dowd is the billionaire founder of a group called The Dawn Project, which has dedicated itself to highlighting what it calls critical safety failures in Tesla's Full Self-Driving software.

He refers to himself as an expert in creating "unhackable" software for military and aerospace clients, and ran for U.S. Senate back in 2022 on a single-issue platform: to "make computers safe for humanity" by banning Tesla's FSD. In 2023, He was banned from advertising on X after He made promoted posts that show Tesla FSD among other things, failing to stop at Stop signs.

Last year, his group, The Dawn Project, paid for a Super Bowl ad, where a Tesla equipped with FSD did not act on a child-sized mannequin in the road. That commercial ends with a message, urging parents to "boycott Tesla to keep your kids safe."

Today, O'Dowd took to X to slam the launch of the Robotaxi service, saying the "Tesla Cultists are celebrating victory" over a system he believes is years behind the competition (especially Waymo). He pointed out that with only fourteen cars operating for half the day, the system was already making significant errors, a rate he claims is consistent with community-tracked FSD data.

The videos shared by the creators (Rob Maurer and Ed Niedermeyer), O'Dowd mentioned in his post, appear questionable, depending on your perspective. In Maurer's video, a trip that was otherwise smooth had a few unnerving seconds of the vehicle slightly swerving into the wrong lane, correcting itself, swerving again, correcting itself, and then finally settling.

The other video from Ed Niedermeyer shows something entirely different. Niedermeyer captured a Tesla Robotaxi approaching an "extensive crime scene" with multiple police vehicles parked on the side of the road.

On his personal Bluesky account (Ed stopped posting on X late last year, in protest of Musk), He claims the Tesla braked hard twice for no clear reason. In his commentary, Niedermeyer argued the car "shouldn't react to any of these police vehicles," and that it was concerning how it reacted to some but not others, before stopping in the "middle of the road instead of defaulting to a minimal risk condition."

Source

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