Autonomous vehicles are touted by many to be the next big thing in the auto industry, with companies like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG), Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), as well as Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) emerging as some of the big players in the sector.
However, with the advent of self-driving cars and a favorable regulatory environment, concerns surrounding the technology, particularly with Tesla and Elon Musk's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, still worry The Dawn Project founder Dan O'Dowd, who recently spoke to Benzinga about the AV sector in the U.S.
Tesla's HW3 System Woes
O'Dowd, a staunch critic of Tesla’s FSD tech, shared that The Dawn Project had run tests on 2023 Model 3 sedans with one megapixel cameras, calling the setup "pretty ancient," adding that during the nighttime test, the testers "couldn't read the letters for 20/20 [vision]" nor could they discern the letters with 20/40 vision either. The cameras caught the chart with 20/60 vision, O'Dowd said.
20/60 vision means that for what a regular person can see from 60 feet away, an affected person can see the object clearly from a distance of 20 feet, which could indicate mild to moderate vision impairment.
"The law says you have to have 20/40 vision to drive a car. So it’s legally blind by the California Department of Motor Vehicles definition," O'Dowd said, adding that the system wasn't "safe enough" to be on the roads. California’s DMV guidelines require the ability to see 20/40 with both eyes together, as well as 20/40 in one eye and at least 20/70 in the other eye, with or without corrective lenses.
Driving Tests, Elon Musk’s Claims
O'Dowd said that The Dawn Project also conducted a driver's test with the system, similar to what new drivers would undergo at 16 years old. The system with the HW3 chip made four errors, which would've resulted in it failing the driving test.
"It doesn’t know what a road closed sign means. It doesn’t understand. It can’t read. It literally cannot read," O'Dowd said, adding that the system struggled to understand a "Do Not Enter" sign until recently, as well as found it difficult to follow laws about not passing school buses when kids were getting on and off.
"There have been 59 deaths that we know about in the U.S., over 3000 crashes. They are way more than Waymo for the same number of miles," O'Dowd shared, drawing parallels between Tesla and Waymo’s self-driving pursuits.
He also criticized Musk’s claims about Tesla robotaxis serving half the U.S. population by the end of 2025, sharing that there were a “small handful of them [Robotaxis] in Austin right now who all have safety monitors.
Silicon Valley Approach
O'Dowd lamented Musk's "Silicon Valley" approach to self-driving cars, drawing parallels with Meta Platforms Inc.'s (NASDAQ:META) former motto "move fast and break things," which "works for Facebook," but doesn’t work for "Tesla or Ford or any of those people," O'Dowd shared, adding that such an approach. "should not be done for any safety critical product [like self-driving cars]."
When asked whether Tesla's FSD v14.3 could help bridge the gap and bring Tesla closer to unsupervised autonomy, O'Dowd said that it could, but it wasn't close enough.
"If I’m going to go to the moon and I walked out of my building and walked 100 feet, I’m closer to the moon than I was in the building. But that’s not telling you how far away it is," he said. However, O'Dowd acknowledged that the system had gotten better. "There are fewer errors. It now does know what do not enter signs are," he said.
Tesla Should Upgrade Chips
"Whatever chip it is that achieves full self-driving, they should give to everybody who paid for it," O'Dowd said when asked about the EV giant possibly offering customers a chance to upgrade their vehicles with the latest chipsets for autonomous driving.
But he shared that upgrades could be challenging given that the older cars also had older cameras instead of the new, five-megapixel cameras that offer better performance. "It might not be easy to upgrade all those cameras," he said. His comments seemed in line with investor Ross Gerber, who demanded a $10,000 refund if the latest v14.3 FSD system failed to offer unsupervised autonomy.
NHTSA Investigation
O’Dowd said that the ongoing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation into the FSD technology should fix the problem, but acknowledged that the agency remained tight-lipped about the progress of the probe. “They’re unresponsive to questions like when it’s going to happen and how it’s looking and anything like that,” he said.
"It doesn’t mean taking the cars off the road. It’s not a problem with the cars. But they should disable the self-driving software until they can pass thorough tests for long distances and unusual circumstances and things like that," O'Dowd said about possible recalls.
However, Musk's claims about the system already being safer than human drivers posed a risk, as some drivers could perceive it as the technology being able to drive them even when they're impaired or tired, O’Dowd added.
Waymo Has Proven Self-Driving Cars Can Work
O'Dowd hailed Waymo's progress in the self-driving car industry, sharing that the company had made self-driving cars work. "10 million people got in the back of a Waymo with nobody driving it and they got to their destination and nobody was killed and nobody was seriously injured," he said, adding that Waymo had recorded one critical disengagement every 17,000 miles.
He also commended Waymo's expansion into other countries across the world, with the company targeting operations in London and Tokyo. However, Waymo can face challenges from Chinese companies like Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU), WeRide Inc. (NASDAQ:WRD) and more. "I think it’s going to be a battle. I think it’s going to be a big technological battle," he said.
Legacy Automakers Vs Chinese Automakers
With Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) targeting Level 3 autonomous vehicles by 2030, we asked O'Dowd if he saw legacy automakers partaking in the AV rush. He shared that the technology could see adoption from legacy automakers as it could help save lives.
"We should be able to reduce the fatalities by 5 or 10 times to 1 to 10 or 20 percent of the current numbers, which in the U.S., was close to 40,000" fatalities in road-related incidents. However, he said that the entry of Chinese vehicles into the U.S. market was "impossible" as the administration has cited security concerns related to Chinese technology.
"You’re going to get a lot better cars in China than you do in the U.S. because it’s all going to go electric," he said, adding that European automakers were struggling to match Chinese companies on price and quality.
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