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

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.

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.