Mark Rober’s Tesla video was more than a little weird

During the weekend, the former NASA engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober published a video that sought to demonstrate the difference between the automatic pilot system of Tesla’s camera and a vehicle equipped with Lidar. He wanted to see if the vehicles would stop automatically before hitting a coyote Wile style wall that was painted to look like a road.

Spoiler alert: The vehicle equipped with the Lidar brakes before crashing into the wall, while the Tesla Model is committed through.

The video was a huge success, amazing 10 million views in just two days. Many people praised Rober to expose the dangers posed by the Tesla driver’s assistance system. But others have accused Rober of having simulated the video, noting a number of inconsistencies. Some said that the video was a secret ploy of Tesla’s enemies to undermine Elon Musk’s mission to advance autonomous cars, thanks to the in -depth promotion of Luminar throughout the video. I contacted Rober to see if he wanted to answer one of these statements but I haven’t heard yet.

Personally, I dispute the title of Rober’s video, “can you deceive an autonomous car.” None of the two vehicles in the test was autonomous. The automatic driver, which is the first generation of Tesla’s first generation assistance, does not allow a car to behave itself. And Tesla actually warns the drivers to stay engaged and pay attention to the road when using the automatic driver. Rober is the victim of this classic error: confuse advanced driving assistance with self-clarification. We were all there.

Let’s see if we can also solve some of the other problems.

Complaint n ° 1: the automatic driver is not on during the test

Most criticism of Rober’s video fall into the bucket of people who think he has simulated the test to make Tesla badly. They note that the automatic pilot does not seem to be engaged when the vehicle is launching through the false wall, citing images of the central display of the vehicle which lack revealing graphics – blue indicator lines and a rainbow road – this signal when the automatic driver is turned on.

The noise has become so strong that Rober finally responded by freeing “raw images” from the test This shows that the automatic pilot was hired a few seconds before the accident.

Complaint n ° 2: the automatic driver disengages just before the impact

But wait! Viewers in Eagle eyes note that the automatic driver seems to be disengaged from a fraction of a second before the impact. Tesla defenders claim that Rober’s hands on the steering wheel in fact disengage the system, while more conspired people wonder If it is actually a huge scandal. Is the automatic driver programmed by Tesla to deactivate a few moments before an accident to avoid taking the blame?

Yes and no. This aspect of the automatic pilot has been known for many years. Rober did not discover it, but that makes him no less questionable.

In 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a survey In dozens of incidents in which Tesla drivers, while using the automatic driver, crashed on stationary emergency vehicles that were parked on the side of the road. In 16 of these accidents, the investigators discovered that the automatic driver “had abandoned vehicle control less than a second before the first impact”.

Many criticisms assume that it is Tesla’s way of avoiding being blamed when its automatic pilot system does not respond to an imminent accident. And yes, I can see what it is certainly like. But the NHTSA found no evidence that suggests that Tesla’s intentions were harmful. And it should be noted that an accident which takes place within five seconds following the deactivation of the automatic pilot is always Recorded by Tesla as an automatic pilot accident.

Complaint n ° 3: the automatic driver is an obsolete system

Tesla fans have also challenged the use by Rober of the Automatic Pilot for the Test, noting that the system has not been updated for years and that the Tesla (FSD) is the most up-to-date and most capable system.

But if the goal of Rober’s video was to expose the difference between the approach of Tesla’s camera to autonomous driving and those based on the cameras alongside Lidar and other sensors, it does not really have any sense to criticize its use of the automatic pilot. The FSD can be more mature technologically than the automatic driver, but it is still based on the same cameras as its predecessor.

Tesla sadly removed the radar and ultrasonic sensors towards the front of its vehicles in 2021 in favor of the new “Tesla Vision” approach. A number of engineers have raised objections at the time – Only to be canceled by Musk.

Of course, FSD has a more sophisticated software stack, formed on end -to -end neurons to include the city driving scenarios, highway and parking. It is easy to draw a post on X saying that the system would have slowed down before running in Rober’s false wall. But that could also have made the same mistake. After all, it was the same company that knew that the automatic driver had trouble detecting truck trailers crossing the vehicle path and did nothing to repair it.

Complaint n ° 4: there have been several catches

In the original video published on YouTube, Rober hires the automatic pilot while traveling at 39 MPH. But in the “raw images”, he posted on X, the system is activated at 42 MPH – which raises speculations according to which there were several catches and that Rober increases the drama for his Youtube audience.

What would I say, yes, no shit. If you really think that a Youtuber with 65 million followers does not take several sockets in each video before publishing, I have a nice seaside property to sell you in Ohio.

Complaint n ° 5: it was sponcon

The importance of the Lidar Luminar company logo throughout the video has raised questions about the question of whether Rober has been paid by the company to promote its technology. And Luminar has carried out its own tests against Tesla vehicles in the past to show the advantages of the laser sensor on a camera system only. As indicated by Drive Tesla CanadaLuminar even promoted Rober’s video on his own website before removing it.

In the video notes, Rober thanks Luminar for the use of his vehicle equipped with Lidar but notes that “no compensation has been given, and it is not a remunerated promotion”.

Complaint n ° 6: The pixel phone in the video was Photoshopped

Rober supposes supposedly a pixel phone to film some of the photos inside vehicles, but some X users note that the “G” on the back of the phone is vertical even when the phone is in landscape, which led some to speculate that he really turns with an iPhone. Rober used pixel phones in past videosBut there is no mention of Google as a sponsor of the video.

Yeah, I have nothing here. He looks pretty sloppy. And I will note that using Photoshop in a video without disclosing it to your audience opens up many valid questions on what you could handle elsewhere.

Complaint n ° 7: The hole in the wall was false

It is a hole in the shape of Looney songs, if I have never seen one. If you presume the hole, it seems clear that you plan to cross it. It’s all people.