Chinese Drivers Are Using Tiny Plastic Heads to Fool Tesla’s Autopilot Safeguards

In China, for conscionable $30, you tin person Dwayne Johnson thrust your Tesla for you. Sounds excessively inexpensive to beryllium true? Well, it is. What you’re really buying is simply a tiny replica of The Rock's head, designed to beryllium supra the rearview reflector and instrumentality Tesla into reasoning an attentive operator is down the wheel. Tesla’s self-driving strategy appears incapable to archer the quality betwixt the figurines and a existent person, allowing the existent operator to look distant from the road, scroll done their phone, oregon adjacent doze off—activities that are expected to beryllium prohibited portion assisted-driving features are engaged.

Last week, videos showing the miniature heads astatine enactment wrong Tesla cars went viral. I fell into a heavy rabbit spread browsing ecommerce sites and online forums to larn much astir wherever they came from. The figurines travel successful dozens of varieties, astir depicting Hollywood oregon Chinese celebrities. Some look to beryllium repurposed dolls oregon figurines. They are conscionable 1 illustration of the creative, but besides perchance dangerous, ways that Chinese Tesla owners are trying to circumvent the car maker’s information guardrails.

On Chinese ecommerce platforms similar Taobao, Xianyu, and Douyin, listings for the heads are casual to find. They are priced anyplace from $10 to $40, depending connected however blase they are. They tin beryllium installed connected the car’s ceiling, windshield, oregon rearview mirror, and are cautiously positioned to artifact the existent driver’s caput and thing else.

One Tesla Model 3 proprietor successful China told maine that his miniature caput works perfectly. (He asked to stay anonymous due to the fact that Tesla doesn’t let specified DIY workarounds.) During a caller roadworthy trip, helium says helium turned connected road autopilot and enactment the fake caput (a bald man, which, successful classical knockoff fashion, looks somewhat disconnected but inactive intimately resembles Dwayne Johnson) connected for astir 250 miles of the 400-mile trip. Normally, Tesla rapidly intervenes erstwhile it detects a distracted driver. With the caput successful place, helium says helium could spell 30 minutes without being interrupted.

In a video helium sent me, the operator was utilizing 1 manus to snack connected roasted sunflower seeds and different manus to film, portion the fake caput suctioned to the rearview reflector blocked the camera from seeing immoderate of what helium was doing. “You should bargain a artifact caput astir the size of a ping pong ball,” the operator said connected a Chinese video level wherever Tesla drivers were exchanging tips with 1 another. “If it’s excessively small, the camera won’t beryllium capable to absorption connected the toy.”

Tesla’s astir precocious driver-assistance system, Full Self-Driving (Supervised), is inactive not disposable successful China. Drivers successful the state tin presently lone entree much basal features for cruise control, autosteering, and autopilot connected immoderate municipality roads. Because the cars are not afloat autonomous, Tesla requires that drivers inactive wage attraction to the road. It uses a assortment of monitoring features to marque definite they aren’t distracted, including a camera located supra the windshield. If the car detects that a operator is not looking up for a fewer seconds, it volition inquire them to redirect their attraction immediately. If they don’t comply, Tesla tin automatically unopen disconnected autopilot mode oregon adjacent prohibition the operator for a week from utilizing driver-assistance features.

Tesla drivers successful different markets, including the US, person agelong searched for ways to get astir their car’s information controls. People person tried everything from wearing sunglasses to marque it harder for the camera to way the eyeballs to installing weights connected their steering instrumentality to instrumentality the strategy into reasoning they are inactive holding on. On Reddit, immoderate users adjacent claimed to person sought retired somewhat older car models that person little susceptible cameras and sensors.