Cybertruck versus Mark Rober's 'Wile E. Coyote-style' wall crash test

Former NASA engineer and popular YouTuber Mark Rober pitted a Tesla's object detection system against Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) system to determine which was better at recognizing objects impeding the path of a vehicle.

Rober tested the Tesla's detection system and the LiDAR system in various scenarios, such as a mannequin child running out onto the road at the last minute, fog, direct sunlight/truck lights, rain, and a wall that was painted to look like the road behind it. The idea with the last test was to see if he could trick the Tesla into thinking the wall was just more of the road, therefore bypassing the detection system. To spoil the video below, LiDAR was able to easily detect the wall due to the fundamentals of the technology, and Tesla's detection system failed, resulting in the famed electric vehicle smashing through.

However, the tests by Rober were called into question by some, and now others are attempting to replicate the results with their own Tesla. Kyle Paul has posted a video on YouTube and X where he attempted to replicate the result by Rober, and he found that even with Full Self-Driving (FSD) he had to slam on the breaks to stop his Model Y from going through the wall. It should be noted that Rober's tests didn't include FSD, which is the much better version of Autopilot. So, even at the most expensive tier of Tesla's automatic driving detection system, the car failed to detect the wall painted to look like a road.

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Paul then proceeds to see if a Cybertrunk would generate better results, with YouTube saying the Model Y (2022) has a "hardware three computer built into it," while the "Cybertruck has the hardware 4 computer built into it". The Cybertruck featured FSD, and the same test was carried out. The Cybertruck detection system, which is also visual-only data recognized the wall and stopped right before it as if it were any other object impeding the road.

The difference between the Cybertruck and Tesla test was the hardware computers within each of the vehicles and possibly the lighting on the road being darker due to the Sun setting. Commenters pointed out that during the Tesla tests, the wall color blended well with the background due to it being much brighter outside. Paul points out that, at the very least, the test shows a big difference between the 2022 Model Y and the Cybertruck in terms of detection.

If you are interested in checking out the details to Mark Rober's test, check out the below link.

• Read more: Tesla Autopilot crash test against wall painted to look like a road