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Tesla sends cease-and-desist letter against ad claiming FSD will “mow down children”
It took a while, but Tesla finally seems to be putting some effort into curbing an aggressive and controversial anti-FSD ad that claims that the company’s advanced driver assist system is unsafe and will “indiscriminately mow down children.” A cease-and-desist letter from the electric vehicle maker has reportedly been sent to The Dawn Project, an advocacy group from Dan O’Dowd, the CEO of Green Hills Software, a company that is also developing self-driving software.
The Anti-FSD Ad
Earlier this month, O’Dowd, through The Dawn Project, started pushing an anti-FSD ad that supposedly showed a Model 3 hitting a child-sized mannequin while FSD was engaged. The video and O’Dowd’s succeeding Twitter commentary were salacious, so it was no surprise that the ad’s allegations were echoed by numerous news outlets. The campaign attracted attention and criticism from Tesla supporters, however, some of whom proceeded to point out discrepancies in the anti-FSD ad.
A number of FSD Beta testers, who have been using Tesla’s advanced driver-assist system for years, proceeded to conduct tests of their own, showing that FSD Beta does stop for people. Others observed that the driver of the Model 3 in O’Dowd’s test intentionally ignored safety warnings from the vehicle. Even EV fan blog Electrek pointed out a number of inconsistencies with O’Dowd’s supposed FSD test results and data, including a sequence in the ad when the advanced driver-assist system was not engaged at all.
Cease-And-Desist
In its cease-and-desist letter, which was retrieved by The Washington Post, Tesla objected to the anti-FSD ad. The company alleged that the footage being pushed by O’Dowd was defamatory and misrepresented the capabilities of its advanced driver-assist system. Tesla demanded that the anti-FSD campaign be immediately halted and the videos be removed.
“The purported tests misuse and misrepresent the capabilities of Tesla’s technology, and disregard widely recognized testing performed by independent agencies as well as the experiences shared by our customers,” Tesla deputy general counsel Dinna Eskin wrote. Tesla also accused O’Dowd’s team of “unsafe and improper use” of FSD Beta. “Your actions actually put consumers at risk,” the EV maker added.
O’Dowd has reacted strongly to the letter. In a post on Twitter, O’Dowd noted that Musk was threatening to sue him. The Green Hills CEO included an incendiary illustration captioned with “Elon Musk’s Idea of Free Speech” on his post, which depicted Musk naked on his plane with a bound woman sandwiched between two male lawyers. The image seems designed to bait Musk, though Tesla itself has not issued a statement about its cease-and-desist letter.
“This letter is so pathetic in terms of whining: Mr. Free Speech Absolutist, just a crybaby hiding behind his lawyers,” O’Dowd told the Post. He also stated that he does not intend to take down his anti-FSD campaign. Instead, O’Dowd has pledged to put even more money into his anti-FSD efforts.
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Not the First Time
This is not the first time that Dan O’Dowd has put Tesla in his crosshairs. Earlier this year, O’Dowd ran for California Senate with the sole purpose of stopping Tesla’s driver-assist systems, which he claims are the worst he has seen. For context, O’Dowd has stated that his software never fails and is unhackable, a claim that has been challenged by cyber security advocates.
Interestingly enough, Politico reported that O’Dowd actually did not plan to win a seat in the CA Senate at all — he was simply in the race because running for office entitled him to the lowest available ad rate in the run-up to the election. It also granted a higher degree of first amendment protection for his loaded claims against Tesla. Ultimately, O’Dowd ended up spending $3.8 million during his campaign — one of the most out of CA Senate candidates— but it resulted in him only getting 1.1% of the votes.
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Elon Musk’s massive Terafab project, which will be the first true conglomeration between each of his major entities, is set to get its final location soon, the CEO said on Tesla’s recent earnings call.
“The Terafab, we expect to announce a location soon, and provide more details about our plans in that regard. We’ll leave that to the product, the launch announcement rather than try to squeeze it into an earnings call,” Musk said last Wednesday.
Tesla Terafab set for launch: Inside the $20B AI chip factory that will reshape the auto industry
Terafab was announced by Musk back in March and was essentially a massive, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing project that would provide all the chips the three companies needed for their AI initiatives without needing third-party companies.
The plant will produce over 1 terawatt of AI compute each year, and will help back up projects like Optimus, Full Self-Driving, and other AI-based projects that Musk’s companies are working on.
In April, less than a month after the project was launched, Intel announced it would join the project, contributing manufacturing expertise and consulting to Terafab as a whole. Intel is one of three chip manufacturers that produce sub-5 nanometer chips at scale. TSMC and Samsung are the other two.
However, there was no true indication of where Terafab would end up, but most believe it will likely be somewhere in Texas. Business Insider has reported that SpaceX plans to build out Terafab in Grimes County, Texas, but this is unconfirmed.
Musk confirmed recently that it would not be on Giga Texas property, as it is simply too large.
The sheer scale of TERAFAB is going to be insane.
Elon said it wouldn’t be suitable for anywhere on Giga Texas property because it’s too big:
“We couldn’t possibly fit the Terafab on the GigaTexas campus. It will be far bigger than everything else combined there.
Several… pic.twitter.com/79GbhNNuf4
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 23, 2026
Terafab holds much of Musk’s grand ambitions for the future within its construct. It holds so much responsibility for the future and the biggest projects that Musk’s companies can imagine.
“I think this is a very big announcement and it deserves to have its own day in the spotlight and not be squeezed into an earnings call,” he said. “I do think Terafab is going to be an amazing initiative and a necessary one, and one without which we will be constrained in our ability to scale Optimus production, because we simply won’t have enough AI chips.”
He continued by stating that Terafab is necessary for scaling Optimus, which Musk said could be the biggest product of any kind of all time. “It’s crucial to solve that, and we’ll have to solve memory, logic, and packaging in order to scale Optimus.”
SpaceX performed a secret test on a specific portion of Starship with its recent 13th test flight last week, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
Starship’s 13th test flight took place last Friday, and in many aspects, it was one of the most overwhelmingly successful launches in the project’s history.
All of the mission objectives were met without incident, both the Super Heavy Booster and Ship managed to perform safe splashdowns in the Gulf of America and the Indian Ocean, respectively, and the deployment of Starlink satellites came and went without any complications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
However, there was more on the agenda for SpaceX with Flight 13. Musk revealed an internal test of the ship’s heat shield tiles, as the space exploration company wanted to push them to the limits after previous issues.
Many noticed that Starship’s initial launch seemed to be more accelerated than normal, and that was not a mistake. Musk revealed that SpaceX decided to give Flight 13 an intentionally aggressive acceleration rate in an effort to test how well the tiles would remain attached to the ship:
This flight intentionally had much higher acceleration to test how well the heat shield tiles would remain attached at high dynamic pressure.
Test was successful.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
SpaceX had issues with some of the heat shield tiles remaining attached early on in the Starship program. The first six test flights presented some kind of anomaly with them, so the company’s big focus with them was to figure out a way to keep them intact through the duration of the flight.
Things truly improved as Flight 10 showed that ceramic tiles generally stayed attached to the ship far better due to refined attachment, as SpaceX utilized pins instead of adhesives. Flights 10 through 13 truly showed some clear progress with the heat shield tiles, and this latest test seems to be where some real progress was noticed, especially by Musk.
The 13th Starship launch last Friday was the second with Starship V3, SpaceX’s latest and greatest iteration of the spacecraft. Goals and ambitions are getting even grander as the project continues to progress. Musk has already hinted that SpaceX will likely try to catch Starship with Flight 14.
Elon Musk
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
Tesla owner David Moss just pushed his intervention free FSD streak past 20,000 miles total.
Tesla Model 3 owner David Moss has spent the better part of eight months turning his vehicle into a rolling stress test for Full Self-Driving, and this week he pushed his single, continuous FSD streak past 20,000 miles without a human intervening.
Moss, a Tacoma, Washington resident who sells LiDAR scanning equipment for a living, first drew wide attention in December 2025 when he logged 10,000 consecutive miles on FSD v14.2. Days later he drove from the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, covering 2,732 miles in two days and 20 hours with zero disengagements, the first verified coast to coast autonomous drive in Tesla’s history. Tesla even featured the trip as an official customer story in March. That original streak eventually reached 12,961 miles across 30 states before ending in rural Wisconsin in January, when snow and single digit temperatures forced Moss to take over.
Tesla FSD successfully completes full coast-to-coast drive with zero interventions
He started over, and this run has gone further. In late May, Moss drove 3,760 miles across Canada with two companions, from Horseshoe Bay in Vancouver to a Tesla showroom in Halifax, again without a single intervention, a trip Tesla AI software VP Ashok Elluswamy publicly congratulated him for on X. In June, he pushed the same unbroken streak south, aiming to link the Canadian border to the Mexican border, and crossed 10,000 miles on Tesla’s newly added in car streak counter along the way, the first driver to do so since Tesla began showing confetti animations for the feature.
20,000 Mile Tesla FSD Screen Streak!
Special thank you to @DevinOlsenn, @scotsrule08, & @OwenSparks for helping co drive during all these fun adventures these last couple of months
Also thank you to @wholemars for always tracking me along the journey verifying it all with his… pic.twitter.com/CZ2yO6Ev0X
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) July 27, 2026
It’s worth noting that every mile is logged through the FSD Database, a community run tracker built by Tesla influencer Omar Qazi, well known as @WholeMars on X, that pulls telemetry straight from the car and records disengagements down to a tenth of a mile. That verification is what separates Moss’s numbers from casual claims on social media.
The streak itself is a fairly recent addition to Tesla’s software. FSD v14.2 introduced a Self Driving Stats panel tracking the ratio of autonomous to manual miles, and v14.3.4 added the live streak counter in June, which resets the moment a driver brakes, wrenches the wheel or cancels navigation. Reaching 20,000 miles on that counter means a single Tesla drove itself through countless highways, city grids, construction zones and Supercharger stalls without a single reset.
Moss has said the goal was never to set a record for its own sake, but to show, mile by verified mile, what the software can already do.
Musk’s massive Terafab project will get final location soon
Elon Musk reveals SpaceX performed secret Starship test on Flight 13
