Looks like Tesla, Inc. is going to face some troubles with the NHTSA in the coming days and weeks. A strong skeptic of Tesla, Missy Cummings has been appointed as a senior safety adviser at the Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) by the Biden administration.
Missy Cummings serves as a professor in multiple engineering and computer science departments at Duke University. She has been a consistent critic of the Tesla Autopilot/FSD software for a few years now. With the new role as a senior adviser at NHTSA, she can create some issues for the Silicon Valley-founded electric car company.
As soon as the Tesla community on Twitter started criticizing her in their tweets for her biased behavior towards Tesla, she has hidden her tweets from everyone except if you’re an approved follower. She has also blocked several Tesla owner and enthusiast accounts that were tagging her in their posts.
“Objectively, her track record is extremely biased against Tesla,” the company’s CEO Elon Musk tweeted earlier this morning as he came to know of this situation.
We can get an idea of how much she dislikes Tesla which can be understood by looking at a small part of the list of Twitter accounts she has been following over the years. Several of these accounts that she constantly communicates with are publicly involved in spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) against Tesla for years now.
E.W. Niedermeyer hates the Tesla FSD program and constantly criticizes and it’s part of his daily routine. Montana Skeptic is another big Elon Musk and Tesla pessimist when it comes to Tesla (TSLA) investing, calling him the leader of all Tesla short-sellers on Twitter wouldn’t be surprising.
Russ Mitchell is a LA Times reporter who is popular for his takes against Tesla. Another TSLA FUD account @BradMunchen is also in Missy’s list of followed accounts.
And, this is not just that she hates Tesla as a company or Elon Musk, she is found guilty for conflict of interest as well. Missy Cummings serves on the board of directors of Veoneer, a company that happens to create software for advanced driver assistance (ADAS) and self-driving as well.
Veoneer designs, develops and manufactures state-of-the-art software, hardware and systems for occupant protection, advanced driving assistance systems, collaborative and automated driving.
Source: veoneer.com
Filings with the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) show that Missy Cummings holds $400,000 worth of stock in Veoneer, a Tesla competitor in self-driving technology.
Back in 2018, Missy Cummings called out NHTSA in one of her tweets, “how many more people have to die behind the wheel of a Tesla in Autopilot mode before you do your job?” she said.
Tesla has historically been scoring 5-star crash safety ratings with the NHTSA. Al Teslas even earned the top places for being the cars with the “lowest probability of injury” of any vehicle tested by NHTSA — ever!
Still, Tesla is striving to improve the safety of its occupants with the recent report from the automaker’s Crash Lab at the Fremont factory. Time will tell how much of a trouble Missy Cummings is going to be for Tesla and Elon Musk in the coming days.
Sandy Munro has just released a video with his views on the NHTSA controversy with Tesla and Elon Musk.
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