Billionaire Senate Candidate and Elon Musk Rival Dan O'Dowd Wants to Bring Down Tesla

Fellow billionaire and tech mogul Dan O’Dowd has a vendetta against Elon Musk and Tesla. Find out why this Senate candidate wants to bring the EV company down.
Written by Jason Crosby
Reviewed by Kathleen Flear
background
Elon Musk has had his fair share of Twitter exchanges with people of all different backgrounds, but one California Senate candidate seems to have it out for Musk and Tesla’s
EVs
. But what does fellow billionaire Dan O’Dowd have against Musk? And what exactly does he plan to do in order to shut Tesla down? 
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Dan O’Dowd and his Tesla vendetta

If you haven’t heard of O’Dowd, you aren’t alone. But his name might keep popping up in headlines as long he continues to campaign in the California Senate races. 
As
InsideEVs
reports, Dan O’Dowd is a billionaire who’s made a fair amount of his money as CEO of Green Hills Software. O’Dowd first garnered national attention for a large ad he ran in the New York Times, which claimed that Tesla’s Autopilot mode was a surefire way to have millions of people killed while behind the wheel of one of Musk’s EVs. 
O’Dowd is also running for state Senate in California, largely focusing his platform on a single issue: making sure that Tesla gets shut down. He argues that Tesla’s vehicles will affect the national power grid and endanger major cities’ water supplies, among other issues. 
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Why is Dan O’Dowd such a Tesla-hater? 

It’s not exactly clear why O’Dowd dislikes Tesla so much, besides the fact that he believes that their self-driving software is completely and irrevocably unsafe. Critics of O’Dowd have also pointed out that he refuses to stay up-to-date with Tesla’s software patches, continued improvements, and willingness (mostly) to work with the NHTSA when it comes to crash investigations. 
O’Dowd’s statement listed by InsideEVs regarding his campaign mission and goals mentions that he will not stop running for office until he accomplishes his goal of persuading the “U.S. Senate to make computers safe for humanity and ban
Tesla Full Self-Driving
”. 

Will Dan O’Dowd become a senator?

It’s not exactly certain whether O’Dowd truly plans on becoming a Senator, or whether he simply plans to make Tesla lose traction and profits using aggressive targeted ads about Tesla’s “dangerous” technology. 
However, it doesn’t seem like his tactics are working. Tesla is currently the
#1-selling luxury brand in the U.S
., and the top EV producer as well. Who knows—maybe Musk and O’Dowd have bad blood that was never settled. 

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