I'm Warming to Electric Race Cars, But Autonomous Racing Makes No Sense

From the August 2017 issue

Electric race cars sound like a guy sharpening a dull switchblade in an automatic knife sharpener while riding a high-speed escalator. It is not a sound you ever want to hear from a complex mechanical device. But I’m getting over it, especially as I watch more Formula E races. At C/D, we seem divided on the series’s relevance, but the organizers have acquired a stellar roster of drivers whose ambition and malevolence make for excellent post-race fistfights.

While watching Formula E last year, however, it dawned on me that someone is going to propose autonomous race cars. And guess what? Say hello to Robocar, a 724-hp autonomous racer with a 62-kWh battery pack, built by a London company called Roborace. Its goal is to organize the world’s first driverless racing series. To that end, it has apparently latched on to strong funding and is going about this project correctly, starting not with the George Jetson–looking Robocar but with two cut-down Le Mans prototypes equipped with all the necessary autonomous sensors. Then it tested the cars the world over.