Former NASA scientist and American YouTuber Mark Rober put Tesla's autopilot to a "crash test", and the results weren't impressive, to say the least.
In the video, Mr Rober said he would check if the car collides with the Wile E Coyote-style wall painting. The YouTuber was referring to the unfortunate enemy of the Looney Tunes series known for his futile plans to catch the Road Runner.
Before the test, Mr Rober explained that other cars used LiDAR for object detection, but Tesla relied on optical cameras. He claimed he set the Tesla on Autopilot at 40 miles per hour "to see if Tesla's Autopilot can be tricked because it famously only relies on simple cameras to navigate the world as opposed to much more expensive tech."
He is then seen driving in the direction of the fake wall and smashing through it.
The vehicle also crushed a child-like mannequin on the other side. While the Tesla Model Y failed to identify a wall painted as the road, another car with LiDAR in the same video appeared to pass the “crash” test.
Mr Rober constantly lauded LiDAR technology company Luminar during the episode, leading viewers to wonder if the video was edited as part of a complex commercial.
He further commended "fancy cars that use more advanced technology" during the test, including Luminar's vision-based LiDAR technology-equipped cars.
People were equally shocked and amazed when the video initially went viral. Soon after, Tesla fans alleged the video was made to defame Mr Musk's car brand.
One user wrote in part on X, "Tesla needs to pull the data from the car itself and show us exactly what happened... I know what the data will show, that this was a huge case of fraud. But I doubt Mark wants us to see all that."
A second user said, “Mark Rober's Tesla Scam EXPOSED – The Experiment Was FAKE!”
“Mark Rober built a reputation as one of YouTube's most trusted creators. But one video may have destroyed his credibility forever,” a third user remarked.
Mr Rober dismissed fake crash test claims and posted “raw footage” of the incident on X, saying that he wasn't sure “why it disengages 17 frames before hitting the wall but my feet weren't touching the brake or gas.”
Earlier in 2022, Mr Rober posted a video explaining how he used a bunch of cockroaches to shut down fake call centres. In the video, he said he was pursuing the scam industry for over a year and exposed at least four of them.
He claimed the scam centres were in Kolkata, West Bengal.
