As recently at Mar 22, 2024, O'Dowd posted on Twitter/X: Human supervised FSD v12 is still far less safe than driving manually, it drives like a drunk teenager and can't pass a DMV driving test, which even the worst 16yr old driver passed. Then Elon e-mailed to the Tesla staff: The CEO wrote in an email to employees: Going forward, it is mandatory in North America to install and activate FSD V12.3.1 and take customers on a short test ride before handing over the car. Musk says that he wants more people to realize “FSD actually works”: Almost no one actually realizes how well (supervised) FSD actually works. Being a Tesla driver since March 26, 2019 and Full Self Driving owner since October 2019, I agree with Elon. As for O'Dowd, if he expressed the same about the other L2 driving systems, he would have some credibility . . . but he doesn't and has none. Bob Wilson
Wiki describes O'Dowd as a sports manager, it's quite a brief article. He's branched into "influencer"?
O'Dowd is pretty smart about some stuff...but he then thinks he knows a lot about other stuff. On the TMC podcast a few months ago O'Dowd claimed that Tesla's were drive-by-wire (steering and pedals) and thus too susceptible to single points of failure, blah, blah. In fact no Tesla's ever sold had drive-by-wire at the time. The Cybertruck does have drive-by-wire now. He also claimed that he and his staff had taken rides in Cruise self driving cars and claimed how safe they were and were fully autonomous and maybe he said brilliant. He claimed they had somehow fully vetted their system as safely driving autonomously. The next week Cruise had the accident in SF and shutdown operations. Oh, yeah, in the investigation it was revealed that Cruise had hundreds of remote operators that would intervene on average of about once every 3 or 5 miles to keep the cars out of situations they couldn't handle themselves. Mike
O'Dowd claims and I believe him, to own several Teslas. If he were a super software wizard, he would have hacked one of them, even replacing control computers, and been running his 'better' Tesla software. Sort of like Trevor Milton and his mythical fool-cell truck. Bob Wilson
He just bought the three Tesla Roadsters that were found abandoned in a container in China so he owns at least three.
Motor Trend compared 3 EVs, M3LR, Kia, Polestar. M3 won. Charging software/infrastructure the big item. FSD not so good but revision tested not specified. Not much in the way of comments on the switchgear or lack thereof, MT now a quarterly print publication so of declining influence. Still full of truck of the year and Corvette generation history. Bet you didn't know a 'vette was available in a hybrid version. Motor Trend also said Prius Prime good alternative depending on your projected use.
Sorry to hear that. Motor Trend, Edmunds, and Car and Driver did better reviews than Consumer Reports. Bob Wilson
