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Produced by: Cory Ray, Philip DeFranco
Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry
Art Department: William Crespo
Writing/Research: Maddie Crichton, Philip DeFranco
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#MarkRober #Telsa #Luminar
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Produced by: Cory Ray, Philip DeFranco
Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry
Art Department: William Crespo
Writing/Research: Maddie Crichton, Philip DeFranco
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#MarkRober #Telsa #Luminar
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NewsTranscript
00:00Former NASA engineer and huge YouTuber, Mark Rober,
00:03has found himself in the midst of a massive Tesla scandal.
00:06With Rober currently being accused of misleading viewers
00:08in his newest video titled,
00:09"'Can You Fool a Self-Driving Car?'
00:11A video that currently has over 10 million views
00:13in just two days.
00:14And in it, he's testing Tesla's camera detection system
00:17versus the LiDAR laser scanning technology
00:19in Luminar vehicles.
00:19Right, and in the video,
00:20you see him put both cars through various tests,
00:22first having them approach a test dummy of a child
00:24and both the LiDAR car and Tesla with autopilot turned on
00:27stop for the dummy.
00:28He then proceeds to add obstacles
00:29like the kid entering the road at the last second,
00:31fog, water, and bright lights.
00:33And while the LiDAR stopped for all of them,
00:34the Tesla with autopilot on ended up hitting the dummy
00:37when faced with fog and water.
00:38But then the test generating the most conversation
00:41was a sort of old cartoon Wile E. Coyote style wall
00:43that looked like a continuing of the road
00:45with Mark trying to see if the fake road
00:47would trick the cars
00:48or if they would recognize it as a wall and stop.
00:50And in the video, what you see is the LiDAR car stopping,
00:52but the Tesla driving through it.
00:54And that is where a lot of the backlash is coming in
00:56because Mark said that he was running all of these tests
00:58using Tesla's autopilot feature.
00:59And you can see it appears to be engaged
01:01leading up to the wall indicated by that rainbow road.
01:03But if you look at the moment it actually crashed,
01:05it doesn't look like it was on.
01:07And then on top of that,
01:07some argue that if you really wanted to accurately compare
01:09Tesla's self-driving technology to LiDAR's,
01:11autopilot was not the right feature to use.
01:13And that because while autopilot has tools
01:15like traffic aware cruise control and auto steer,
01:17many Teslas now have a newer tech
01:19called full self-driving or FSD,
01:20which has all those tools and many more,
01:22which is why you had outlets like Forbes saying,
01:24frankly, few are interested in tests on the old autopilot.
01:27So that makes Robert's tests fairly meaningless,
01:29even if it is the case that the newest FSD system
01:31would have made the same errors.
01:33We unfortunately don't know.
01:34Also, in addition to that, in the description of the video,
01:36Mark says that while there was no compensation given
01:38and the video was not a paid promotion,
01:40Luminar did provide the vehicle
01:41so they could test the LiDAR technology.
01:43And with that, you had Forbes adding,
01:45while Robert may not have known
01:46about the software versions available for his car,
01:48the crew at Luminar, the LiDAR company,
01:50which assisted with the test,
01:51provided the LiDAR car and system
01:52and has done these tests before,
01:54would surely have been aware of them
01:56and should have informed Robert.
01:57As you know, with all this,
01:58there's been a ton of outrage online as well
01:59with people writing things like FSD was never engaged
02:02and nothing was on when he crashed into the wall.
02:04The whole video was designed to bash Tesla
02:05and promote Luminar, a LiDAR company.
02:07As well as I truly don't want to believe
02:08Mark did this intentionally,
02:09but I mean, the car isn't even on autopilot when it crashes.
02:12This is disappointing, Mr. Robert.
02:14You also had some saying that Luminar
02:15was previously advertising Mark's video on its website,
02:17though it appears that's no longer the case.
02:19And that has prompted some to question
02:21how involved LiDAR and Luminar were in the video.
02:23But it appears that while Mark drove the Tesla,
02:25someone from Luminar drove the LiDAR, right?
02:27They have the company's gear on.
02:28And even though Mark said that it wasn't sponsored
02:30and they just provided the gear,
02:31not everyone seems to be buying that.
02:32Also something that we've seen really blow up around this
02:34are conversations around stock prices.
02:36There was some noting that Luminar's stock went up huge
02:39after the video was posted over the weekend.
02:40Whereas Tesla's stock,
02:41at least as of recording, has dropped today.
02:43So you have some arguing that Tesla
02:44should take legal action here
02:45with the creator, Meet Kevin,
02:47putting out a video saying Mark defrauded the company
02:49and a lawsuit could be filed, adding.
02:51He promotes his own product
02:53using this, frankly, defamation against Tesla
02:56to promote his own product,
02:58while also promoting Luminar Tech.
03:00Whether or not Luminar Tech paid Mark Roper here or not
03:03may not matter.
03:04He creates negative brand for Tesla
03:08by implying that the technology he's showing
03:11is Tesla's full self-driving technology.
03:14He literally writes, can you fool a self-driving car?
03:19But he doesn't actually use the self-driving technology
03:23in his experiment.
03:24This is really problematic
03:26because if the test was done more fairly,
03:29it'd be tough for Tesla to have an argument here.
03:32Now for his part with this,
03:33Mark responded to some of this backlash
03:35by posting the raw footage of the wall test.
03:37Here we go.
03:41Here we go.
03:42Holy shit!
03:46And just like in the YouTube video,
03:47you can see that autopilot engages at one point
03:50and then goes off just before the crash.
03:51And Mark seemed to acknowledge that by writing,
03:53not sure why it disengages 17 frames before hitting the wall,
03:56but my feet weren't touching the brake or gas.
03:58But also, notably,
03:59his response generated more criticism, right?
04:01Some alleging that the clip that he posted
04:02was a different take
04:03than the one that was in the YouTube video.
04:05And with all of this developing in real time
04:06and new questions and accusations popping up,
04:08we reached out to Mark Roper for comments or a response,
04:11and we actually got him on a Riverside call.
04:12Keep in mind, this is not a debate.
04:14I just want to get on the record responses from him
04:16regarding some of the most asked questions,
04:18including if he actually did multiple takes
04:19of the wall crash video,
04:20and then the internet can go from there.
04:22Mark, thank you so much for the time.
04:24I'm just going to kind of go through the bullet points
04:26of accusations and questions regarding the video.
04:31And like we talked about beforehand,
04:33if there are things that feels like people would think
04:35that were missed or weren't covered
04:37or come out as we're recording today's video,
04:39you said you're open up to follow-ups?
04:41Yeah, sure, totally.
04:42All right, so first one is less of an accusation
04:45and more a question,
04:47was there any reason you opted to test autopilot
04:50on the Tesla instead of full self-driving?
04:52My understanding with full self-driving
04:54is that you have to enter an address for it to work,
04:58and as opposed to just being able to engage it.
05:01And this is what Tesla has called autopilot,
05:05and even Googling it,
05:06seeing what they determine as autopilot,
05:10and my understanding is that the sensor is not different,
05:14whether it's full self-driving or autopilot,
05:16knowing if that's a wall or not, that doesn't change.
05:19So I think I could, I mean,
05:21I'd be happy to rerun the experiment in full self-driving.
05:25I'm pretty confident it wouldn't be a different result.
05:29So to me, it was a distinction without a difference.
05:31In the clip that you posted on Twitter,
05:33where you said, here's the raw footage,
05:36can you explain what it is that we're seeing
05:38and what you're trying to explain is happening in that?
05:41You said, not sure why it disengages 17 frames
05:44before hitting the wall,
05:45but my feet weren't touching the brake or gas.
05:47So I think people were saying
05:48that I was manually just drove it through
05:51because 17 frames, by the way,
05:54is like less than a half of a second
05:55before it hits the wall.
05:57Again, my hypo, I don't know why it would disengage.
06:00I was not pulling on the steering wheel,
06:02and by the way, even if I did disengage it,
06:05it's less than a half a second before you go off.
06:09The outcome would not be different.
06:12My guess is maybe the sensors, the ultrasonic sensors,
06:14which I think are on the bumper,
06:16they probably just disengage
06:18if they sense that something big is there
06:20and it just stops being in the self-driving mode
06:24or autopilot, whatever you want to call it.
06:26So that's all I'm saying is like,
06:28some people clipped right after and said,
06:29look, it's not on autopilot.
06:31And I was like, I don't know.
06:33I'm just here, like,
06:35I don't have a horse in this race either, by the way.
06:37I just wanted to go, I love my Tesla.
06:39I'll probably get a new one when they come out.
06:42I'm just here to look at the data.
06:44And I think I struck like a political nerve or something.
06:47And the video was about LIDAR,
06:50and all the cool ways LIDAR is used.
06:52So I felt like this was a fun test to run.
06:55And papers have been run on it.
06:57Like, can you fool a self-driving car
06:59with a Wiley Coyote ride?
07:00Like, papers have been written on this.
07:02So it's like, well, I should just run the test.
07:04That's what it was.
07:06Regarding the raw clip and what's in the video,
07:09there've been people that say that it looks like
07:11you may have had multiple takes,
07:14or possibly gone through the wall multiple times.
07:16Were there multiple takes?
07:18What can you give any insight there?
07:20I mean, this is like what you put in the end video.
07:23So the first day we went out there,
07:25I think you can even see it.
07:26There was a, we didn't have like the Styrofoam wall.
07:29It was just like a vinyl sheet.
07:32And it was clear, if you just drive up with it,
07:35you can see, the Tesla tells you the math
07:38of what it's looking at.
07:39And if you drive up to this wall with the road,
07:43it doesn't register anything.
07:44It doesn't register a cone.
07:45It's so like, whatever the brain,
07:48the math that it's doing in the computer,
07:51it doesn't register when you paint a road
07:53that something's there.
07:54Like, even if you just drive up to it.
07:56So anyways, we, yeah, we did a take.
08:00It went right through.
08:01I think that was the one that maybe was at
08:0440 miles an hour or something.
08:06But it was just like, instead of cutting through it,
08:08like which would visually look cool,
08:10it just kind of tore the side and like a little flap
08:13came up.
08:14So it was like, that was a very interesting finding
08:16that it actually worked.
08:17And by the way, I'm happy to give you the raw footage
08:19of that take too.
08:20So you'll see it going through the wall,
08:22but it's more of a flap.
08:23And then we're like, holy crud,
08:25I can't believe that really worked.
08:27And then, I don't know, like three weeks later,
08:29we went back out when schedule permitted,
08:32this time with like a styrofoam wall,
08:35because I thought it'd be funny if it's like,
08:36well, now that it goes through the walls,
08:38we should have like a fun cutout as it goes through.
08:40So I guess in the edit then,
08:42we used the start of one of those clips.
08:45So it went through the wall twice,
08:48once when it was just kind of a flap
08:50and then second when it actually was.
08:52And I understood.
08:54So I guess that's the confusion there.
08:57So the clip that you posted online or on Twitter
09:00was the one where you actually,
09:02the raw of you actually going through it the second time?
09:04Yes, that's the second time.
09:06Whereas the cool styrofoam and like the cutout, right?
09:09The first time you'll see, it's just like a vinyl print.
09:12It kind of just, the flap ripped up on the side.
09:15So it just didn't, it didn't look as interesting.
09:18Regarding Luminar, there've been a lot of people asking
09:21what kind of role they played, right?
09:23The description of the video says
09:24they provided the car for testing.
09:26Did they have any say in the edit?
09:28Did they have any say in the setup?
09:29They didn't see the edit?
09:30Yeah, I really want to clear this.
09:32Luminar gave us no money.
09:33They had no say in the edit.
09:35They did not approach us.
09:38They were just a car technology I know that use LiDAR.
09:41So I reached out to them and say,
09:42hey, will you let us borrow some cars?
09:45And then they let us use the cars.
09:47So we didn't pay them to come.
09:49They did not pay us.
09:50They had no say.
09:52And we didn't know what happened either, by the way.
09:54And we told them, look, if your LiDAR fails one of these,
09:57it goes in the video.
09:59And if Tesla would have passed all of them, by the way,
10:00that would have gone in the video.
10:01Like, I'm very agnostic.
10:03I really just wanted to see what would happen.
10:05So truly, I don't have a horse in this race.
10:08And I guess on that, do you or anyone close to you,
10:14once again, it's like based off of these accusations,
10:16do you or anyone close to you have any Luminar stock?
10:19I do not own any Luminar stock.
10:21Or I do not know of anyone close to me
10:23who owns any Luminar stock.
10:25Absolutely.
10:27And I know you said you love Tesla, just to confirm,
10:30do you have any options or puts on Tesla?
10:34I have no options on Tesla.
10:36I have no puts on Tesla.
10:37I have just, there's no financial anything in here at all.
10:42At all, 100%.
10:43I'll go into quarter law.
10:45Okay, well, because I'll know.
10:47Besides data and interesting,
10:49like it's an interesting test.
10:50That's like the history of my channel.
10:52And just whatever the data shows is what I'll put up.
10:55Because I will say, I mean,
10:56regarding you saying this in the court of law,
10:57I mean, there have been a lot of people,
10:59granted it's the internet, granted it's YouTube videos.
11:01I've seen some folks like, I think it was meet Kevin,
11:05saying that there's a possibility of a lawsuit.
11:08Do you have any concerns over that
11:10based off of the video or anything like that?
11:12No, because it's like, I mean, anyone can sue in America.
11:16So I guess, but I think we could get it dismissed
11:18pretty quickly because it's like,
11:20I just have nothing to hide
11:22and I have no ulterior motives here.
11:24No one's paying me.
11:25I have no stock.
11:25I have no shorting.
11:27I will get, I'm planning on getting another Tesla in,
11:30like I don't even have politically,
11:33apparently it's a political issue.
11:34Like I politically, I don't even have a horse in this race.
11:36I just thought it was an interesting finding.
11:39So Mark, kind of the last few things I'll hit on.
11:41One, do you have any comment or reaction to Luminar
11:43removing the link to your video from their website?
11:47I believe it was as of this morning.
11:49I, someone, I think someone said that they had posted it.
11:54My guess is they took it down because they aren't,
11:57we were very clear with them.
11:58Like you aren't allowed to use this at trade shows.
12:01This isn't part of your marketing material.
12:02Like we're not, this isn't a puff piece for you.
12:05We just want to borrow the car
12:06and whatever happens, happens.
12:08So I, my guess is they felt bad
12:11and realized that's a bad look if they are posting it.
12:13But we told them like,
12:14this is not for your marketing materials.
12:17We are just using your car for our video.
12:18So if it's down, I'm guessing that's why they took it down.
12:21Out of respect for us.
12:22Sure, and then the last thing is just,
12:24is there any general reaction or statement
12:27or anything you want to throw in there
12:29that you feel like wasn't addressed
12:31by the questions that I've thrown at you,
12:33which, or anything like that?
12:35No, I just like, I love my Tesla.
12:38Like it's one of my favorites.
12:39I'm really just here for the data.
12:41Like I really don't have a horse in this race.
12:43And I realize now we plan these videos a year in advance.
12:46So the idea that this was like timed
12:48because of political stuff,
12:49like a year and a half ago, this was on our docket
12:52and we've been marching towards releasing this.
12:53So I plan on upgrading my Tesla in like six months.
12:58So I don't, I'm just, I'm just here for the data.
13:02And I don't think it means they're self-driving
13:05or is terrible as it, like it's going to get better.
13:08Like, but yeah, this, what happened happened.
13:11And if you could easily recreate and anyone,
13:14what happened happened and anyone with a Tesla
13:16can easily recreate exactly what I did, so.
13:20Well, I've definitely seen that there's been talk
13:22of trying to recreate it.
13:23So it's going to be interesting to see
13:24if that happens, what the results will be.
13:26But for now, thank you so much for the time.
13:28And yeah, we'll talk soon.
13:30Right, so that is a story.
13:32Then you have Mark Rober's responses.
13:34And from here, while we wait to see what plays out,
13:36I'd love to know your thoughts on the situation
13:37because yeah, this is a new show.
13:39That's why people watch.
13:40But what really makes it interesting for me
13:41is the conversation.
13:42So let me know what you're thinking
13:43in those comments down below.
13:45Hey, thanks for watching.
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