The Car Wash Test: Why LLMs Tell You to Walk to the Car Wash
The car wash test is having its viral moment right now. The premise is simple: “So my car needs to get cleaned. The car wash is 50m away. Should I walk or drive?” In my testing, ChatGPT 5.2 recommended to walk to the car wash. I tested several models, with and without extended thinking, and found the following: Model Result ChatGPT 5.2 ❌ FAIL Claude Haiku 4.5 (Extended Thinking) ❌ FAIL Claude Sonnet 4.5 (Extended Thinking) ❌ FAIL Claude Opus 4.5 ✅ PASS Claude Opus 4.6 ❌ FAIL Claude Opus 4.6 (Extended Thinking) ❌ FAIL Gemini 3 Thinking ✅ PASS Gemini 3 Pro ✅ PASS* * Kind of cheated. ...