惯性聚合 高效追踪和阅读你感兴趣的博客、新闻、科技资讯
阅读原文 在惯性聚合中打开

推荐订阅源

罗磊的独立博客
L
LangChain Blog
aimingoo的专栏
aimingoo的专栏
IT之家
IT之家
B
Blog
博客园_首页
博客园 - 司徒正美
有赞技术团队
有赞技术团队
博客园 - 聂微东
I
InfoQ
美团技术团队
GbyAI
GbyAI
阮一峰的网络日志
阮一峰的网络日志
H
Help Net Security
大猫的无限游戏
大猫的无限游戏
MyScale Blog
MyScale Blog
WordPress大学
WordPress大学
The GitHub Blog
The GitHub Blog
A
About on SuperTechFans
人人都是产品经理
人人都是产品经理
Microsoft Azure Blog
Microsoft Azure Blog
Engineering at Meta
Engineering at Meta
钛媒体:引领未来商业与生活新知
钛媒体:引领未来商业与生活新知
The Cloudflare Blog

WIRED

‘Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender’ Leaked Online. Some Fans Say Paramount Deserves the Fallout NASA Wants to Put Nuclear Reactors on the Moon AI Could Democratize One of Tech's Most Valuable Resources Microsoft Surface PCs Are Getting Big Price Hikes, and the Cheaper Models Are Going Away Why Amazon Is Buying Globalstar—and What It Means for Your iPhone The US Government Will Ask Data Centers How Much Power They Use MAGA Is Starting to Look Beyond Trump Allbirds Is Pivoting to AI Compute. Sure, Why Not Best Smart Smoke Detector (and Why You Still Need a Dumb One) 12 Best Standing Desks of 2026, Tested and Reviewed Best Wi-Fi Routers of 2026 for Working, Gaming, and Streaming Best GoPro Camera (2026): Compact, Budget, Accessories The Caves That Could Help Us Find, or Become, Aliens AI Slop Is Making the Internet Fake-Happy The Deepfake Nudes Crisis in Schools Is Much Worse Than You Thought In the Wake of Anthropic’s Mythos, OpenAI Has a New Cybersecurity Model—and Strategy Telegram Is Still Hosting a Sanctioned $21 Billion Crypto Scammer Black Market The FCC Has a Fast Lane for Complaints About Trump’s Media Critics Top iRestore Deals for Hair Growth and LED Therapy Devices Meta Is Warned That Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators You Should Be More Freaked Out by Shingles BYD’s Fastest-Charging Car in the World Is Astonishing—in Good and Bad Ways The 4 Best Water Filter Pitchers (2026): PFAS, Microplastics The Internet's Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril The Dumbest Hack of the Year Exposed a Very Real Problem AI Agents Are Coming for Your Dating Life ‘The Audacity’ Is the Broligarchy Takedown You Were Waiting For Why Is It So Hard to Fix an Electric Bike? (2026) Best 2-in-1 Laptops (2026): Microsoft, Lenovo, and the iPad There’s a Secret Ingredient to Making Luxury Ice at Home
Chinese Drivers Are Using Tiny Plastic Heads to Fool Tesl...
Zeyi Yang · 2026-06-13 · via WIRED

In China, for just $30, you can have Dwayne Johnson drive your Tesla for you. Sounds too cheap to be true? Well, it is. What you’re actually buying is a tiny replica of The Rock's head, designed to sit above the rearview mirror and trick Tesla into thinking an attentive driver is behind the wheel. Tesla’s self-driving system appears unable to tell the difference between the figurines and a real person, allowing the actual driver to look away from the road, scroll through their phone, or even doze off—activities that are supposed to be prohibited while assisted-driving features are engaged.

Last week, videos showing the miniature heads at work inside Tesla cars went viral. I fell into a deep rabbit hole browsing ecommerce sites and online forums to learn more about where they came from. The figurines come in dozens of varieties, most depicting Hollywood or Chinese celebrities. Some appear to be repurposed dolls or figurines. They are just one example of the creative, but also potentially dangerous, ways that Chinese Tesla owners are trying to circumvent the car maker’s safety guardrails.

On Chinese ecommerce platforms like Taobao, Xianyu, and Douyin, listings for the heads are easy to find. They are priced anywhere from $10 to $40, depending on how sophisticated they are. They can be installed on the car’s ceiling, windshield, or rearview mirror, and are carefully positioned to block the actual driver’s head and nothing else.

One Tesla Model 3 owner in China told me that his miniature head works perfectly. (He asked to remain anonymous because Tesla doesn’t allow such DIY workarounds.) During a recent road trip, he says he turned on highway autopilot and put the fake head (a bald man, which, in classic knockoff fashion, looks slightly off but still closely resembles Dwayne Johnson) on for about 250 miles of the 400-mile trip. Normally, Tesla quickly intervenes when it detects a distracted driver. With the head in place, he says he could go 30 minutes without being interrupted.

In a video he sent me, the driver was using one hand to snack on roasted sunflower seeds and another hand to film, while the fake head suctioned to the rearview mirror blocked the camera from seeing any of what he was doing. “You should buy a toy head about the size of a ping pong ball,” the driver said on a Chinese video platform where Tesla drivers were exchanging tips with one another. “If it’s too small, the camera won’t be able to focus on the toy.”

Tesla’s most advanced driver-assistance system, Full Self-Driving (Supervised), is still not available in China. Drivers in the country can currently only access more basic features for cruise control, autosteering, and autopilot on some urban roads. Because the cars are not fully autonomous, Tesla requires that drivers still pay attention to the road. It uses a variety of monitoring features to make sure they aren’t distracted, including a camera located above the windshield. If the car detects that a driver is not looking ahead for a few seconds, it will ask them to redirect their attention immediately. If they don’t comply, Tesla can automatically shut off autopilot mode or even ban the driver for a week from using driver-assistance features.

Tesla drivers in other markets, including the US, have long searched for ways to get around their car’s safety controls. People have tried everything from wearing sunglasses to make it harder for the camera to track the eyeballs to installing weights on their steering wheel to trick the system into thinking they are still holding on. On Reddit, some users even claimed to have sought out slightly older car models that have less capable cameras and sensors.

The latest wave of camera-tricking gadgets began spreading in China in October, shortly after Tesla pushed out a software update in the country that activated distracted-driver monitoring through the vehicle's in-cabin camera. People quickly began searching for ways to get around the system. Some drivers used webcam covers to block the camera completely, but then Tesla issued a notice warning car owners that the assisted driving features would no longer work if the camera was obstructed. That’s when the fake heads emerged.

Creative Workarounds

Instead of a 3D head, some Tesla drivers in China simply hang a static picture of a person in front of the camera. Others take it a step further and use lenticular prints—the ridged novelty cards that switch between multiple images when viewed from different angles. One popular version alternates between photos of the same person with their eyes open and closed, creating the illusion of blinking as the card gently sways while the car is in motion.

The most technologically advanced gadget I’ve seen is a pocket-sized display screen that is also meant to be put in front of the in-cabin camera. It plays a looped video of a person blinking their eyes and moving their head. Posing as a prospective buyer, I contacted the seller, who claimed that it has been tested on Tesla’s Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck, and can achieve “0% error rate.” They also claimed to have already sold the device to customers in the US, Canada, and Korea, who have access to the full suite of FSD features, and the tiny screen worked for all of them.

At this point, these camera-tricking gadgets still seem to be a niche market dominated by DIY sellers. The product listings I found appeared to have sold only a few dozen units apiece. But if they get more popular, it’s hard to imagine that Tesla won’t try to crack down on the industry. I contacted Tesla to ask if it is aware of these products and whether it plans to take any action against sellers, but the company didn’t respond.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about these gadgets, and many people on Chinese social media have criticized their use. In the comments under promotional videos, people often compare them to clips that allow drivers to avoid putting on a seatbelt while driving. Both product categories put drivers at risk in exchange for convenience.

I admit that I was surprised that all it takes to trick Tesla’s system is a toy head, especially given how far AI technologies have come in the past few years. If car companies want to convince the public that their driver-assistance functions are safe and don’t enable distracted driving, there’s still a lot more they need to do.


This is an edition of Zeyi Yang and Louise Matsakis Made in China newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.