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Practically demonstrating the marketing adage “all publicity is good publicity,” Tesla’s rivals seem to have again helped the company attract additional eyeballs if the recent Google Search trend is anything to go by.

To wit, the founder and CEO of Green Hills Software, Dan O’Dowd, aired anti-Tesla ads during this Sunday’s Super Bowl event, highlighting the various shortcomings of Tesla’s Autopilot – an L2 Advanced Driver-Assistance System (ADAS).

https://dawnproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/SB-WASHINGTON-THEDAWNPROJECT-1.mp4

This campaign is being run by the Dawn Project with the aim of tackling “Elon Musk’s reckless deployment of unsafe Full Self-Driving cars on our roads.” As can be seen in the video above, the ad calls on regulators to ban Tesla’s Autopilot system, alleging that the Full Self-Driving (FSD) capability of Tesla’s Autopilot system can “rundown a child in a school crosswalk.” The ad also highlights some of the other glaring Autopilot shortcomings that have come to light over the years.

$TSLA search activity surged during yesterday’s Super Bowl after competitors’ EV ads ran. Same thing happened last year. pic.twitter.com/jDJVCWotQ7

— Gary Black (@garyblack00) February 13, 2023

Nonetheless, this campaign of vitriol seems to have benefitted Tesla. As detailed in the tweet above, search engine queries on Tesla soared during the Super Bowl event.

Back in June, the National Highway and Transportation Safety Authority (NHTSA) cast a significant pall over the safety record of the Autopilot system when it revealed that Tesla’s EVs were involved in 70 percent of the crashes that pertained to vehicles sporting a Level 2 ADAS, with 60 percent of these crashes resulting in significant injuries. In total, the NHTSA disclosed 401 incidents for Tesla. Of course, with Tesla EVs constituting the bulk of the Level 2-equipped vehicles on the road currently, the company’s share in road crashes is naturally going to be higher. The NHTSA is also aware of 35 crashes where the Autopilot was active but has yet to make a determination in majority of these cases whether the ADAS was responsible for those crashes. In fact, last week, the NHTSA did give an all-clear to the Autopilot in one such accident.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s strategy of resorting to aggressive price cuts appears to have paid off, with the company reportedly increasing the production at Giga Shanghai to a weekly average of around 20,000 units for February and March 2023. This level of output almost matches the company’s production level back in September 2022, when Giga Shanghai managed to produce 82,088 Model 3 and Model Y EVs.

Additionally, as demand for its EVs continues to recover in China, Tesla has increased the price of Model Y to 261,900 Yuan. The Model Y used to retail in China at around 288,900 Yuan before Tesla cut its price to 259,900 Yuan on the 06th of January 2023. The latest price change serves to boost confidence in the prognosis that the worst period for Tesla’s demand outlook might well be in the rearview mirror, for now at least.