Self-Driving Tesla Crashes into Wall Painted to Look Like a Road… Just Months Before Planned Robotaxi Launch
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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!
Entire video is worth watching. He also snuck a chest mounted lidar into Disney and mapped some rides.
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Was just thinking this
A single LiDAR sensor prevents this kind of issue
I'm trying to find an article that covers what I remember but I know for sure that it's been a good while since I saw the info I recall. Hopefully I can dig something up.
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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!
They obviously pre-cut the wall, probably for safety reasons, and they were like, let's make it a silly cartoon impact hole while we're at it.
Good job.
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I'm so glad I wasn't the only person who immediately thought "This is some Wile E. Coyote shit."
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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?
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.
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I'm trying to find an article that covers what I remember but I know for sure that it's been a good while since I saw the info I recall. Hopefully I can dig something up.
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They're not reading speed limit signs; they'll follow the speed limit noted on the reference maps, like what you see in the app on your phone.
There's a lot of cars that check via camera too to double check, for missing/outdated information and for temporary speed limit signs.
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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?
Came here to actually write this. Everyone remembers that. He made Tesler the hated shit it is today.
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There's a lot of cars that check via camera too to double check, for missing/outdated information and for temporary speed limit signs.
Where I live there are a lot of "temporary" 30km/h speed limits that were never removed by the road workers after the work was completed.
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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!
Show someone footage of 9/11 and they‘ll think of 2001. Show someone footage of a burning or crashing Tesla 20 years from now and they‘ll think of 2025.
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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!
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I'm so glad I wasn't the only person who immediately thought "This is some Wile E. Coyote shit."
I mean, it is also referenced in the article and even in the summary from OP.
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That might actually be the exact article I'm thinking about. Thanks!
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Came here to actually write this. Everyone remembers that. He made Tesler the hated shit it is today.
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.
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I mean, it is also referenced in the article and even in the summary from OP.
And extensively in the video too.
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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.
Yep! That's what I'm thinking of. It was Elmo. The real engineers objected.
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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!
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I read something a while back from a guy while wearing a T-shirt with a stop sign on it, a couple robotaxies stopped in front of him. It got me thinking you could cause some chaos walking around with a speed limit 65 shirt.
I think one of my favorite examples was using simple salt to trap them within the confines of white lines that they didn't think they could cross over. I really appreciate the imagery of using salt circles to entrap the robotic demons ...
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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?
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
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The actual wall is way more convincing though.
