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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 is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.
Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.
Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.
He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.
Given that AI from 2 years ago feels so old that it should be in a museum, then obviously AI 2 years from now will be mind-blowing https://t.co/TcsKZ8o8OE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2026
This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:
The progression in AI of Will Smith eating spaghetti (2023 – 2026) pic.twitter.com/VDv82mB5gs
— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) February 10, 2026
This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.
Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.
Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.
But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.
Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.
In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.
10 million vehicles produced globally.
Congrats to all Tesla teams! pic.twitter.com/JkcraR63bs— Tesla Manufacturing (@gigafactories) July 30, 2026
Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.
The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.
Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.
This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.
Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.
Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years
Tesla just built it 10 millionth car
