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!

  • @Polderviking@feddit.nl
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    53 hours ago

    I remember elon saying something along the lines of his camera system being just as good and they thusly don’t need to employ things like LIDAR.

  • @RambaZamba@feddit.org
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    4515 hours ago

    Things that happen when you rely exclusively on optical sensors, i.e. cameras. But that’s just cheaper, more money for Nazi Elon.

    • Inkstain (they/them)
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      55 hours ago

      Are we reeeeally sure optical sensors with fast image recognition software are cheaper than LiDAR?

      • @Tzig@sh.itjust.works
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        22 hours ago

        The hardware is, which is the important part at scale: even if the code is 10x more expensive when you sell millions of the car it becomes pennies/car

  • Jeffool
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    14 hours ago

    This would be hilarious if it weren’t for shitty cars causing deaths.

    That said, I always wondered why we don’t find a system like RFID that could penetrate concrete and asphalt, and plant passive receivers in roads? We re-pave roads so damn often in this country (the U.S.) it seems like we could’ve knocked it out in the past couple of decades, minus our most rural areas.

    I know RFID itself isn’t strong enough, but I imagine that would’ve been an easier problem than figuring our complete self driving. Not to mention making GPS a secondary system for U.S. road travel in most cases.

    Maybe it’s just a dumb shower thought?

      • @towerful@programming.dev
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        55 hours ago

        Echolocation is specifically audio based.
        Lidar is a similar technique, but much more accurate and precise.
        Project a grid of laser beam, read when the laser bounces back, you know the distance to that part of the grid.

      • Jeffool
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        412 hours ago

        I don’t know the value of echolocation in this case, as I’m generally ignorant here, but it’s straight wild to me that they went purely on visuals.

    • KayLeadfootOP
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      3018 hours ago

      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

  • @Yoga@lemmy.ca
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    2118 hours ago

    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.

  • Magnus
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    8123 hours ago

    I remember Elon foolishly saying his cars don’t need radar or lidar. Even software-disabling radar in cars that already had the hardware.

    • @gmtom@lemmy.world
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      1615 hours ago

      Not even just his cars, he thinks the MILITARY, doesn’t need radar and can just use cameras to spot and track stealth fighters.

      He’s a fucking lunatic.

      • @towerful@programming.dev
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        25 hours ago

        As an augmentation, the ability to spot and track objects visually would be amazing.
        But then planes just have to fly above 10k ft, and pretty much guaranteed cloud cover.

    • @bier@feddit.nl
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      2319 hours ago

      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.

      • ferret
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        124 minutes ago

        The funny thing is, apparently our depth perception, a product of our two eyes, is a feature beyond the reach of tesla. And it would have allowed to to complete this test.

      • @Yoga@lemmy.ca
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        1318 hours ago

        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?

        • @kelseybcool@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          Some school buses have a sticker / sign on the back that says “I stop for railroad crossings” and can have a stop sign on said sticker.

        • @CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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          814 hours ago

          I was thinking the same thing. What would happen if you popped one out of the back of your car while driving in front of a self driving car on the freeway?

  • @kameecoding@lemmy.world
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    841 day ago

    This is why it’s fucking stupid Tesla removed Lidar sensors and relies on cameras only.

    But also who would want a tesla, fuck em

      • @aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        Leon said other sensors were unnecessary because human driving is all done through the sense of sight…proving that he has no idea how humans work either (despite purportedly being a human).

    • @bitchkat@lemmy.world
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      2924 hours ago

      They never had lidarr. They used to have radar and uss but they decided “vision” was good enough. This conveniently occurred when they had supply chain issues during covid.

    • @Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com
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      201 day ago

      They also removed radar, which is what allowed them to make all of those “it saw something three vehicles ahead and braked to avoid a pileup that hadn’t even started yet” videos. Removing radar was the single most impactful change Tesla made in regards to FSD, and it’s all because Musk basically decided “people drive fine with just their eyes, so cars should too.”

  • @Naevermix@lemmy.world
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    2320 hours ago

    Make Elon test ride the first Tesla robotaxi and there’s a chance the funniest thing of all time will happen.

  • @EaterOfLentils@lemmy.world
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    5224 hours ago

    Apparently they keep getting tickets in China because they didn’t bother to adjust the settings to accommodate Chinese roads and traffic laws. Result is Tesla is getting utterly crushed by BYD in their one major market that doesn’t care about Elon’s antics.

    • @accideath@lemmy.world
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      920 hours ago

      Huh, now I’m mildly interested in the differences in traffic laws in China vs US vs Europe that lead to Teslas getting more tickets in China than elsewhere.

      • @elephantium@lemmy.world
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        1118 hours ago

        I found this article. My takeaways were:

        1. No driving in bus lanes during certain times of day.
        2. No using the shoulder as a turn lane.
        3. No using a bike lane as a turn lane.
            • @conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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              11 hours ago

              I think their regs, while seemingly very basic rules of the road, are based because I live in the US and we have bike lanes here that just whole ass turn into turn lanes with almost no warning. I wish we could get basic decency for everyone on the road, too.

              • @elephantium@lemmy.world
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                13 hours ago

                Ah, gotcha, yeah, that makes sense.

                My own city has pretty good bike lane coverage, but it’s similar – cars have to cross over the bike lane to get into the turn lane.

                Basic decency…gah. Yeah, I wish. :(

  • @Ghyste@sh.itjust.works
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    2811 day ago

    I seem to recall that fElon prevented the self driving team from utilizing LIDAR for any part of the system, instead demanding that everything run off of optical input. Does anyone else remember the same?

    • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Yes. He took too much inspiration from Stanford University’s “Stanley” winning the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. This was an early completion to build viable autonomous vehicles. Most of them looked like tanks covered in radar dishes but Stanford would up taking home the gold with just an SUV with cameras on it.

      It was an impressive achievement in computer vision, and the LiDAR-encrusted vehicles wound up looking like over-complex dinosaurs. There’s a great documentary about it narrated by John Lithgow (who, throughout it, pronounces the word robot as “ro-butt”). Elon watched it, made up his mind, and like a moron, hasn’t changed it in 20 years. I’m almost Musk’s age so I know how the years speed up as we go on. He probably thinks about the Stanford win as something that happened relatively recently. Especially with his mind on - ahem - other things, he’s not keeping up with recent developments out in the real world.

      Rober just made Musk look like the absolute tool he is. And I’m a little worried that we may see people out there staging real world versions of this somehow with actual dangerous obstacles, not a cartoonish foam wall.

      • KayLeadfootOP
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        220 hours ago

        I did low-key get the squiggles before writing the article. I thought, from an ethical hacking disclosure-type perspective, that this info might cause folks to… well, ya know, paint tunnels on walls.

        Then I looked, the cat was already out of the bag, the video had something like 5 million views on it in the 4 hours it took me to draft the article. So I shared it, but I definitely did have that thought cross my mind. I am also a little worried on that score.

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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      1 day ago

      What’s cool is that Teslas used to have radar sensors, at least, but Elon removed them from production to save money. Even if you have a car from back then, the software no longer uses them and they’ll just physically unplug them the next time you have the car serviced, as it’s just a drain on the battery at this point 🙃

      • The Quuuuuill
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        321 day ago

        meanwhile our subaru has lidar for adaptive cruise control and emergency braking

        • @fulg@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          I didn’t realize EyeSight had different versions, on the Solterra it looks like it is indeed LIDAR.

          My Crosstrek has the older dual camera setup for depth perception, it would not be fooled by a picture of a road on a wall… I’m surprised the Teslas are.

      • MedicsOfAnarchy
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        61 day ago

        they’ll just physically unplug them the next time you have the car serviced

        So, (looks at watch), in an hour?

    • @SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works
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      241 day ago

      Yes, I recall at the time experts saying it was a terrible mistake and Elon saying Machine learning will bridge the gap.

      The real reason was to increase margins.

      • @cyd@lemmy.world
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        361 day ago

        Funny thing is, the price of lidar is dropping like a stone; they are projected to be sub-$200 per unit soon. The technical consensus seems to be settling in on 2 or 3 lidars per car plus optical sensors, and Chinese EV brands are starting to provide self driving in baseline models, with lidars as part of the standard package.

      • @Ghyste@sh.itjust.works
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        91 day ago

        Ah okay. I was genuinely curious if I was remembering correctly because I definitely know it’s been awhile since I’d read anything on the subject.

    • paraphrand
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      211 day ago

      I remember there being claims from him or his team about lidar being a dead end that would not scale as well as computer vision.

      • @IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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        231 day ago

        I believe he claimed that since humans use their vision to drive that computer vision was more than enough.

        I don’t know about you, but I also rely on sounds & feel when I drive. I also know that the human eye has evolved to detect motion, filter out extraneous information, and send just the important bits to the brain so that it doesn’t get overloaded with everything the eye sees. Computer vision is the exact opposite from that, having to process every bit of every image the camera sees.

        • bluGill
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          231 day ago

          I also know of many times my vision fails. Driving into a sunrise for example

        • Terrasque
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          131 day ago

          since humans use their vision to drive that computer vision was more than enough

          Surprised he didn’t swap out the wheels with legs while he was at it

        • @JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world
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          51 day ago

          I don’t know about you, but I also rely on sounds & feel when I drive.

          Of course. When I feel myself driving into a wall, I stop immediately.

    • Ulrich
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      423 hours ago

      Tesla never had LIDAR. That’s the little spinny thing you see on Waymo cars. They had RADAR, and yes it was removed in 2021 due to supply shortages and just…never reinstalled.

      • @JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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        122 hours ago

        It was removed due to supply chain, but Musk did seem to legitimately think optical only was better.

    • Kokesh
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      121 day ago

      Came here to actually write this. Everyone remembers that. He made Tesler the hated shit it is today.

      • @Ghyste@sh.itjust.works
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        91 day ago

        As a space nut I seriously hope that he never gets a chance to do anything similar with SpaceX. Thankfully he’s mostly been kept away from important things thus far.

        Don’t get me wrong, I know SpaceX’s closet is overflowing with skeletons. But since Congress has been so kind as to continuously cut NASA’s budget for the last few decades, I have to rely on SpaceX and other private companies to keep our space endeavors going.

        • Kokesh
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          61 day ago

          I’m (was) huge SpaceX nerd, but last year or so I’m less and less. He always was dumb narcissist asshole, but now I can’t take it anymore. Also the idea that we’ve fucked up this planet and need to move somewhere else, by doing thousands of launches finishing this planet always made me sick. If someone would take him out, I probably would come back to liking the company.

    • @kibiz0r@midwest.social
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      51 day ago

      Is that just to cover his ass cuz he was promising backwards-compatible FSD for models that don’t have LIDAR?

  • FlashMobOfOne
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    1421 hours ago

    I am very glad that Elon and Trump have overreached and now Tesla is suffering. I hope Starlink is the next domino to fall.

      • FlashMobOfOne
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        1021 hours ago

        Good.

        I’m not rooting for America to fail, but I’m 100% rooting for Elon to fail.

  • FauxPseudo
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    1923 hours ago

    New stuff to add to the car kit bag for the 21st century

    1. poster board to block usonic weapons
    2. black paint, white paint, roller, brush to paint tunnels on walls
    3. orange cones to pen in self driving cars