The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently appointed a new senior safety adviser, which made Tesla, Inc.CEO Elon Musk and Tesla, Inc. 's loyal fans are fidgeting because the new consultant is thought to have always been biased against Tesla, Inc..

Their target is Mary Cummings, a female professor at Duke University, who has always been critical of Tesla, Inc. 's Autopilot software. This week, she was selected as the senior security adviser for NHTSA. The former U.S. Navy pilot is also a member of the board of directors of Veoneer, a Swedish company that is being used by Qualcomm IncAcquisition. Musk scoffed at lidar technology promoted by Veoneer and adopted by competitors.

Musk was on Twitter on Tuesday."objectively speaking, her past record is seriously biased against Tesla, Inc.," it said. " Some supporters of Tesla, Inc., who call themselves "for progressive Autopilot users", launched a petition on Change.org, urging US President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, NHTSA and the Federal personnel Administration to re-evaluate the appointment. As of Wednesday afternoon local time, the petition was close to its goal of attracting 10,000 signatures.

Cummings tweeted back to Musk, saying "I'd love to sit down and talk to you at any time."

Musk boasted in 2019 that Tesla, Inc. planned to launch more than 1 million robot taxis by 2020, but that goal was not achieved. Cummings said last year that it was ridiculous for Tesla, Inc. to call 2020 the year of robotic taxis, and experiments in her laboratory showed that Autopilot was "far from ready".