In the piece — titled “Can You Fool a Self Driving Car?” — Rober found that a Tesla car on Autopilot was fooled by a Wile E. Coyote-style wall painted to look like the road ahead of it, with the electric vehicle plowing right through it instead of stopping.
The footage was damning enough, with slow-motion clips showing the car not only crashing through the styrofoam wall but also a mannequin of a child. The Tesla was also fooled by simulated rain and fog.
This, if the so called Tesla fans even drive the car, they know all of the above is more or less true. Newer cars have fewer of these issues, but the camera based Auto Pilot system is still in place. The car doesn’t even allow you to use cruise control under certain circumstances, because the car deems visibility too poor. The camera also only detects rain when its pouring, every other situation it will just randomly engage/disengage.
I drive a Tesla Model 3 (2024) daily and I wouldn’t trust the car driving itself towards a picture like that. It would be an interesting experiment to have these “Tesla Fans” do the same experiment and use a concrete wall for some additional fun. I bet they won’t even conduct the experiment, because they know the car won’t detect the wall.