this post was submitted on 16 Mar 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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[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 1 day ago (10 children)

If only elon hadn't insisted on not using lidar or anything other than just visible light cameras

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 12 points 1 day ago (9 children)

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.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago (6 children)

They never had lidar, as far as I know.

[–] Retropunk64@lemm.ee 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The video literally shows it having lidar tho.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

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)

[–] Retropunk64@lemm.ee 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, gotcha, I was only half watching so I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

well, the video is peak youtube, 19 minutes where the first 9 minutes are completely irrelevant, followed by 6 minutes of repetitive content, then the interesting part that made us click is just 30 seconds, followed by an irrelevant conclusion. It's more an ad for those two companies that lent the lidar than actual road safety test

[–] Retropunk64@lemm.ee 1 points 3 hours ago

Idk, as a reformed Disney nerd in my youth, I thought the section about Space Mountain was cool as hell, even if it was only tangentially related to the rest of the video.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 1 points 14 hours ago

I think some Chinese ones do (nio?), but definitely not tesla

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