Mark Rober just set up one of the most interesting self-driving tests of 2025, and he did it by imitating Looney Tunes. The former NASA engineer and current YouTube mad scientist recreated the classic gag where Wile E. Coyote paints a tunnel onto a wall to fool the Road Runner.
Only this time, the test subject wasn’t a cartoon bird… it was a self-driving Tesla Model Y.
The result? A full-speed, 40 MPH impact straight into the wall. Watch the video and tell us what you think!
Insurance fraud is going to bankrupt Tesla robotaxis faster than an incompetent CEO ever could.
There will be too many ways to defeat the cameras and not having LiDAR unlike the rest of the industry may prove to be found to be a failure of duty of care.
Turns out having radar is rather important…
It’s dirt cheap, too. If this was a cost-cutting measure, it was a thoroughly idiotic one. Which feels like the mark… of a certain someone I can think of
Some cartoon shit
This is some amazing stuff! Buy $LAZR! 😁
Make Elon test ride the first Tesla robotaxi and there’s a chance the funniest thing of all time will happen.
Meep meep!
I am very glad that Elon and Trump have overreached and now Tesla is suffering. I hope Starlink is the next domino to fall.
Yup plus the European Union is making their alternative to launch in a year or 2
Good.
I’m not rooting for America to fail, but I’m 100% rooting for Elon to fail.
My vacuum would pass that test… why is a Tesla worse at this?
In short because Elon (wrongly) believes you only need cameras, he made the claim people also drive with just 2 eyes.
The thing is, we recognize a truck with stickers of a stopsign, while AI vision gets confused.
Waymo (Googles self driving side hussle) was build on lidar and other sensors and has been using robot taxis for many years now in geofenced specific areas.
The thing is, we recognize a truck with stickers of a stopsign, while AI vision gets confused.
Lmao would it be illegal to put a stop sign on the back of your car?
I had a conversation with a friend who claimed the road and sign system we have in our country, has errors in it causing her brand new car to act weird.
By acting weird she meant, phantom breaking. Breaking when the car thinks the car driving the opposite direction is coming head on. Sudden and small jerks inside the lane. Not following the speed limit.
She thought and probably still thinks the road system and not the car, is at fault. It’s a Skoda fyi. These assistants ruin driving. I’m hesitant to catch a ride with her again.
It’s going to get more people killed.
New stuff to add to the car kit bag for the 21st century
- poster board to block usonic weapons
- black paint, white paint, roller, brush to paint tunnels on walls
- orange cones to pen in self driving cars
And a “Yikes!” sign 🤣
I remember Elon foolishly saying his cars don’t need radar or lidar. Even software-disabling radar in cars that already had the hardware.
I mean his right, his cars don’t need radar or lidar. They just drive into things.
Yeah but the radar/lidar may allow them to drive into things quicker.
That’s some Wiley Coyote shit if I ever saw it.
Is this video being suppressed by the YouTube algorithm? I wonder if it’s because of Tesla or Disney. Or maybe it’s because of simulated child harm?
Don’t want to rock the boat but apart from being a you tube money earner this doesn’t prove or disprove anything. A lot of humans would be fooled by this also.
I am suspicious of the way the polystyrene wall broke in cartoon like shagged edges, almost like they were precut.
It may not rise to the level of proof, but it is a memorable and easily understood demonstration of something already proven by car safety researchers, as mentioned in the article.
Why shouldn’t they precut the wall into cartoony shapes? It adds entertainment and doesn’t compromise the demonstration.
The point of the test is to demonstrate that vision-only, which Tesla has adopted is inadequate. A car with lidar or radar would have been able to “see” that the car was approaching an obstacle without being fooled by the imagary.
So yes, it seems a bit silly, but the underlying point is legitimate. If the software is fooled by this, then can you ever fully trust it? Especially when sensor systems exist that don’t have this problem at all. Would you want to be a pedestrian in a crosswalk with this car bearing down on you in FSD?
What would the wall being precut have to do with the car deciding to drive through it?
Nothing much is real anymore on YT
They were expecting this result to be possible. What were they supposed to do? Slam the car into the side if a building?
Yes but the main point that has been shown is that putting a screen up with the exact copy of the road and surroundings behind the screen is a daft and dangerous idea. It would be a better test if they had put up a polystyrene tree in the middle of the road and then checked if the car stopped.
I have never driven through a polystyrene wall with a picture of a road on it in 40 years because people just don’t put those things up, they don’t grow on roads etc etc.
Great YT clip for entertainment though.
The other two tests that the Tesla failed were more realistic. Heavy fog and heavy rain.
It failed both.
If your self driving car cannot handle weather, then it’s not self driving at all.
Actual lidar isn’t fooled by weather. Shitty optical only cameras are.
Have you never heard of a mural before?
