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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

California tech titan’s Senate run has one target: Tesla’s self-driving software

A red sign on a storefront shows the Tesla logo.
Dan O’Dowd says Tesla’s self-driving software is ‘amazingly terrible’ and, according to his analysis, goes wrong every eight minutes. Photograph: David Zalubowski/AP

Dan O’Dowd is hardly the first California tech titan to bankroll his own campaign for high political office. What makes him unusual is that he has no interest in winning the US Senate seat he is vying for, or even in challenging the other candidates competing in the 7 June primary.

O’Dowd, a software entrepreneur with a 40-year history of working on military, aerospace and other commercial contracts, is running, rather, out of frustration at his fellow tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk, whom he accuses of endangering road safety with a driver assistance software package he’s put in his Tesla electric cars.

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