A bizarre Looney Tunes-style road experiment has sparked debate around Tesla’s autopilot after YouTuber Mark Rober drove his Model Y toward a painted brick wall to test whether the EV would detect the obstacle at speed.
The video, uploaded on Rober’s channel, recreated the classic Wile E. Coyote vs Road Runner gag which is a realistic roadway painted over a brick wall, designed to fool the eye. The objective was simple: would Tesla’s camera-based driver assistance system recognise the wall or charge ahead like the cartoon coyote?
Before the gag test, Rober ran comparisons with a Lexus RX equipped with LiDAR, placing crash-test dummies on the road to observe how each system responds. While the Lexus stopped in time, thanks to its laser-based sensing system, the Tesla became the headline moment.
Here's what happened
As Rober activated autopilot and let the Model Y roll forward, the EV showed no sign of braking. The car ploughed straight through the painted barrier. Stepping out amid scattered debris, Rober joked, “Turns out my Tesla is less Road Runner, and more Wile E. Coyote.”
Tesla vehicles rely solely on camera vision and do not use LiDAR which is a point that has long divided experts. Critics argue this makes the system less reliable in unexpected scenarios, while supporters insist cameras can match human thinking more closely
Broader debate continues
The experiment arrives at a time when Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software is already under scrutiny in the U.S., with California’s DMV challenging its branding and safety claims. Despite legal pushback, Elon Musk has repeatedly stated that unsupervised FSD and even a robotaxi network are on the horizon.
Rober acknowledged that real-world cars don’t typically face cartoon illusions, but the demonstration has renewed conversation about how far autonomous systems still have to go.
