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!
Taking a guess here, but I think Mark Rober is not a big trump/musk fan? :D
He is studiously apolitical, the only political comment I could find from him was the very sensible advice that we need to tone down our hyperpartisanship :)
https://x.com/MarkRober/status/1641487680168153089?lang=en
For me, I criticize any vehicle that is objectively crappy… and some vehicles where I find them subjectively crappy… and I hope folks don’t assume I’m doing that because of my political leanings.
The story of the disney thing as a reason for why to make a Lidar video, is a great “cover your ass” move.
No one will accuse him of doing it to hit Elmo’s self driving taxi ambitions. but the timing is telling.
he could have made the video at any time, he chose to do it now.
I am a bit disappointed to not see the Tesla crash into a real wall. I feel a bit click baited here.
Also, they prepared the polystyrene wall to break this cartoonishly, but still played on being surprised.
Is such depressing cynicism fun for you?
Yeah, do YTers not have the money to kill one Tesla?
That seemed like an expensive production, sadly one totaled car couldn’t make it.Should’ve let WhistlinDiesel “test” it.
For environmental reasons I’m glad they’re not just destroying whatever they can afford to
Yes, you are very right.
The purpose of the video is to test a hypothesis, not to total a car.
Mark Rober is a youtuber sure, and some of the stuff he does is to feed the algorithm. But he’s also an engineer, and that involves experimentation and a good dose of science.
Engineers won’t set up tests that intentionally destroy their expensive test equipment if they can conduct an equivalent test non-destructively.
Did anyone seriously expect it to be a real wall with Rober sitting in the driver’s seat?
Apparently, yes.
I was expecting they’d rig it with a dummy sitting
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The title of this post is “Self-Driving Tesla Crashes into Wall Painted to Look Like a Road… Just Months Before Planned Robotaxi Launch”. In order to know that someone was sitting in the car, you have to watch the video.
I’m a bit disappointed they painted identical to the actual road. Probably a lot of humans will get fooled by that one. We should send a challenge back: how looney toons can you get? Will something more cartoonish fool it? Will a different landscape fool it? How about drawing an oncoming train?
Haha, oncoming train? You’d be lucky to avoid a slow-rolling freight train at a clearly lit crossing in a Tesla using FSD.
Case in point:
Meep meep.
Youtube mad scientist
Okay come on, Styropyro fits the bill way better for “mad scientist”
Styropyro genuinely has a screw loose, explosions and fire also fits the bill. And he’s Australian.
NurdRage ticks the box for me. Also NileRed before he moved out of a garage lab. Still cool though.
Yes! Also Photonic Induction, maybe. Big Clive would be hard to label mad, though some of his experiments are in pretty interesting territory.
Big Clive is great for interesting electronics/deathtraps 🙂
Aw come on, I thought the lasers versus watermelons demo was a lot of fun, and if that isn’t mad science, I don’t know what is
Don’t get me wrong, I love Mark, but his content is kind of, tailored to the masses, you know what I mean? Fun stuff you can do at home! A mad scientist might do something more insane, such as connect 100 car batteries together to rival the power of lightning…
This is like the crash on a San Francisco bridge that happened because of a Tesla that went into a tunnel and it wasn’t sure what to do since it went from bright daylight to darkness. In this case the Tesla just suddenly merged lanes and then immediately stopped and caused a multi car pile up.
You’d think they have cameras with higher dynamic range and faster auto exposure in their cars by now. Nope, still penny pinching.
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, as far as I know.
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…
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Still think LIDAR is inferior to computer vision, Elon?
He never thought about it in the first place.
That was never in question, they just went with cameras because they’re dirt cheap compared to lidar.
Yes, because cameras are cheaper.
“Wile E Coyote was here”
Clearly we don’t need lidar!
Direct video link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ
I tried watching it and it forces a horrible dubbing over it so I didn’t want to watch it. Apparently only way to chage it is to change my whole youtube account language
for the youtube website interface click on the gear wheel, and you can select the audiotrack you want
Yes, but not possible on mobile
I don’t know if it’s somehow not available to everyone, but I am able to change the audio track on mobile.
“But humans can do it with their eyes!” - says the man not selling a human brain to go with the optical sensors
“But humans can do it with their eyes!”
The thing is, RADAR can see things humans can’t. There was a whole article a while back about a Model X that avoided an otherwise unavoidable accident by bouncing radar under the car in front of it and seeing that car slam on the brakes.
I will point out that if you (or your camera-only driver assist) can’t stop without hitting the car in front of you when they slam on the breaks, then you’re driving too close to them… You really shouldn’t ever put yourself in a position where the person in front of you could cause you to unavoidably hit them.
That said… Yeah, radar/lidar are far better than camera alone and there’s no good reason not to include them in the sensor suite unless you value profits over lives.
And I will point out that if the car in front of you isn’t paying attention and rams a stopped car in the middle of the road, you are fucked no matter what.
Not if you have the following distance to stop, but point taken: a crash decelerates you faster than breaks can and typical following distances are assuming breaking distance, not hard sudden halts.
So increase your following distance. It also has the benefit that it makes it easier to see what’s ahead of the car in front of you.
There’s pretty much no accident that’s unavoidable (barring someone else plowing into you) if you drive defensively enough (assuming good traction and good breaks, but obviously you should increase your following or decrease your speed to compensate for that as well)
Not if you have the following distance to stop
Maintaining a stopping distance like that is nigh impossible in a dense urban area. You’d be constantly cut off and causing tons of traffic.
Really? I do it pretty frequently without issue…
dude is living proof brains are optional
The thing is, yes humans can do it with their eyes. But even with the giant amount of progressing power from the brain they are still not great at it.
So of the ultimate goal is to the minimum/cheapest to be almost as good as human then yes, optical sensors only are enough.
Of the goal is to prevent deaths and significantly reduce the number of accidents compared to then lidar is the best option.
Very interesting!
What’s the payoff period, I wonder, assuming everyone could afford optical only before everyone could afford better tech.
“But humans can do it with their eyes!”
That’s the best part, they kinda can’t.
There are videos from before they pulled the sensors of some pretty cool stuff where teslas slammed the breaks before anything visibly happened, based on lidar sensors sensing trouble a couple cars up the road, completely blocked to vision.super cool safety tech, and then they pulled it…
one example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIcC2ZMePKI
Pretty sure that wasn’t even lidar. It was radar which is even cheaper and pretty much every other new car has if they don’t have lidar.
Don’t give him ideas!!!
On the internet, nobody knows you’re just a brain in a
jarcar.Check out moneybags over here who can afford a jar car.
Please don’t vandalize their JarCar it has my mom’s brain tissue in it.
The day I heard that was the day I realized he’s a fucking idiot and I wanted nothing to do with his cars/tech.
Judging by how things have turned out…damn was that a good decision lmao
They pulled the RADAR from mine just before I took delivery, unbeknownst to me at the time. I received no sort of notification.
Absolutely the same timing for me. That was a big, oh that’s his logic?, moment.
I’m kinda confident that even RADAR + cameras was good enough, but they started shipping cars without it and even shutting off the RADAR in existing cars.
The main negative about LiDAR is the cost, but that’s quickly going down.
Why did they shut off radar?
They don’t want to install it in the newer cars, and they don’t want to make two software versions I guess. A backup would’ve been great though…
Thank you!
can someone do this to trumps tesla please
Trump will never be in it. His security detail could never allow him to drive in it. Nor would the back seat ever be as comfortable as what he usually drives in so he wouldn’t want to be in it unless it was for press purposes. There’s a reason the Cadillac cost over a million dollars that the presidents usually drive around in.
In silicon valley there is an episode where a bunch of phones explode because of a software problem. A lot like the pager attack trump got a trophy for. And musk could take any of these cars and “self drive” them to where ever, and “update” their discharge parameters or something, then boom. The trucks are 10k lbs too. Bet you could take a small building down with one without much fuss. They are pretty fast. Scary shit. Musk is a huge problem. Watch all gov envoys being his swasticars and then he can take people out russian style. opps, accident, again.
Mark Rober. Why did it have to be Mark Rober.
I don’t know anything about him, what’s wrong with him exactly?
He shouts all the time. My theory is that the shouty style works for younger US audiences.
For a non-American it’s grating AF.
It’s very shouty, very dumbed down, I can’t stand it. There’s a few channels like that.
Pre-cutting the polystyrene to make it collapse in a more cartoony way
There’s something about his presentation style I just can’t stand. Just the epitome of the “hey what’s up guys” approach.
It’s for kids, dude
I love some of the stuff he does (the hot wheels race is absolute gold), but I agree. He’s only leaned further into the cringe since launching crunch labs.
To be fair, he seems to be targeting kids with his content now. Anything to get kids interested in STEM early is a win in my book.
It’s very modern, cheesy & spoon-feedy. Lots of staging. Overly friendly. Like it is filmed with the approval and oversight of HR.
I know what you mean. He does some amazing things, but I tend to stick to the highlights rather than sit through whole videos. This one, the elephant toothpaste vid, and others like it can be watched as a 15 second clip if you just want to see the hook.
It clearly works for his target audience, so I can respect sticking to the formula.
I think that’s largely because he wants to make his channel as kid-friendly as possible. If you watch some of his real early videos, he has a much calmer, more lecture-like demeanor without all the goofy edits and other modern YouTube tropes.
His other big business venture is a subscription box for kids, which I think it aimed for around 8-13 year olds, so I imagine he’s adopted his current personality to try to appeal to that audience.
His target audience is teenagers, so that’s what you get. I think having a guy like him teach kids about LiDAR and stuff in an entertaining way is a win.
But yeah, as a 30 year old I agree he’s a bit too much.
Why not? Seems fitting an ex NASA engineer show Elon, the man currently trying to dismantle NASA, just what kind of intelligent people exist in that agency.
Yeah, but I just can’t stand his presentation style.
Mark Rober is what you get when you cross veritasium with Mr beast. Someone who’s genuinely smart but they’re going to leave all that stuff out because they want the bigger audience
Mark Rober is what you get when you cross veritasium with Mr beast.
I hate that this makes as much sense as it does.
The question is could this fool a human
Also I went and watched the video and he doesn’t seem to even use full self driving for the wall test
As a human who watches the video, I can say no. The wall would not have fooled me.
Are you sure though?
If you knew to expect a wall it is pretty obvious but if you aren’t expecting a wall it might prove confusing.
I probably would stop either way.
I watched the video. The wall would not fool a human with object permanence.
Anyone who is fooled, is likely impaired enough that they are not legal to drive.
There’s no way the wall would look real as your perspective shifts while yoi over closer to it. Most humans would react to that by at least slowing down.
Many people tend to doze off so much they would absolutely get fooled. I admit I might, too, especially if the wall is made of a material that needs no guy wires to prop it up. They either used digital effects or a very good color grading job, it’s uncanny.
This is what happens when you don’t lidar
To any artists in Austin,TX: you have your work cut out for you. Godspeed.
They sound like they’re perfect for red states
I would say that it’s a good idea to paint more tunnels on walls, but then I remember how dumb human drivers are too
You’d be horrified how many people drive off a bridge that has collapsed, it’s happened multiple times in multiple different incidents.
I’d be horrified that physical barriers with bright reflectors weren’t put up before the bridge that was out.
This has typically been seconds after the bridge collapsed, before emergency services could reach the site.
Did you really think someone just demolished a bridge without putting up a sign?
