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Up close with Roborace’s beautiful self-driving racecar

Up close with Roborace’s beautiful self-driving racecar

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Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge

Self-driving racecars sounded ridiculous to me the first time I heard about the idea. Why not just televise CPU vs. CPU Gran Turismo races while we’re at it? But at Mobile World Congress this week, Formula E boss Alejandro Agag and Roborace CEO Denis Sverdlov unveiled the Robocar with a compelling pitch: it’s all about trust. 

If we’re ever to get to a point where all cars are electric and autonomous, demonstrating that robots can drive themselves around complex tracks at 200 mph without exploding would seem to be as good a way as any to convince the public at large that these machines can be safe and reliable. It’ll also probably help if the car looks as ridiculously beautiful as the Robocar.

So here are some pictures.