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!
You’d think they have cameras with higher dynamic range and faster auto exposure in their cars by now. Nope, still penny pinching.
The cameras that do what is needed are 10’s of thousands of dollars.
If only elon hadn’t insisted on not using lidar or anything other than just visible light cameras
Yeah, pulling radar from the cars was the beginning of the end. Early teslas had radar, and that was what led to all of the “car sees something three vehicles ahead and brakes to avoid a pileup that hasn’t even started yet” type of collision avoidance videos. First, pulling radar was a cost cutting thing. Then Elon demanded that they pull out the lidar too, and that’s when their crash numbers skyrocketed.
They never had lidar, in addition to radar they removed the ultrasound sensors for parking, which is stupid because they cost like $2 and for parking they’re much better than cameras. Same for the rain sensor. Why use a $1 rain sensor that always works reliably all the time in any visibility when you can do that with cameras and complex algorithms?..
It’s been about 7 years of model 3 on the market, maybe 8, and the rain detection still doesn’t work reliably. Or the traffic sign recognition (in Europe). My car fortunately still has the ultrasound sensors. Phantom braking is still an issue, too. Thank God for stocks for blinkers and drive/reverse.
I like the car in general, but it has the dumbest fails, things everyone else seems to have figured out.
Other cars also have dumb mistakes, like electric cars with no frunk. Literally bolted down hoods. Looking at you, German auto industry…
They never had lidar, as far as I know.
The video literally shows it having lidar tho.
The lidar car in the video is a modified Lexus prototype (came with radar from factory, modified by a third party, with Lexus branding blacked out and replaced with the third party name)
Afaik at the moment there are no cars in the market that have lidar (waymo is adding lidar to cars that have only radar as stock)
Ah, gotcha, I was only half watching so I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification.
I think some Chinese ones do (nio?), but definitely not tesla