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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[–] 98 points 2 years ago* (19 children)

Who was the idiot that removed LiDar to cut costs?

/s

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  • [–] 47 points 2 years ago (15 children)

    Elon removed the radar. Tesla cars never had lidar. What an idiot Musk.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    He did say lidar was "useless" though.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

    He's said humans don't use LiDAR so his cars shouldn't have to. Of course humans have a brain, and he's cars don't, but you can't tell him anything.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Human drivers also make automobiles one of the most dangerous ways to travel.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think it's also reasonable to say a human dying because of their own actions is different than a human dying because a big corp cut costs on safety features in an entirely autonomous car where the human has no ability to stop what's happening. (You can control them in current teslas, but they're working on cars without human controls as well)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Weymo have them beat then. They already have cars that essentially act like taxis and the only control the passenger has is an emergency stop button. But they don't control the speed they don't control the steering or anything.

    But those systems absolutely do have lidar because in order for them to be widely accepted they don't need to be a bit safer than humans they need to be a lot safer than humans.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    He also said the government doesn't use sql.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Bahaha, what kind of a bizarre statement is that?

    Was he trying to imply the government only uses spreadsheets and nosql DBs?

    Or did he think it was necessary to point out that your average government employee isn't writing their own SQL to grab data they need?

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago*

    Tesla had camera+radar+sonar, and that wasn't their own tech - they used mobileye EyeQ back then. When they switched to in house tech they gradually ditched the radar and sonar which made no sense to me. But at the time I saw their lead say in an interview that this is superior and I believed. not anymore.

    they said doing so cut costs but obviously lidar/radar/sonar only gets cheaper over time, let alone the extra r&d costs because a vision only system is much more difficult to develop.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    It was removed because it was giving false positives. They should have upgraded it with lidar but decided to just remove it.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    They are so expensive too! /s

    Who would have known electronics gets cheaper all the time?? /j

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