*NOW UPDATED WITH VIDEO* Roborace reveals how an autonomous racecar might look should drivers become obsolete. Hmm…fun…
Roborace has revealed first images of how its autonomous racecar could look like. The new category for autonomous vehicles will join the all-electric Formula E grid as a support feature throughout the 2016/2017 season.
The brainchild of former Bugatti and Volkswagen concept designer Dan Simon (now Roborace’s chief design officer) and looking suspiciously like Chevrolet’s Chaparral 2X Vision Gran Turismo, the new Robocar not only boasts one of the most hackneyed names in motorsport history, but also a radical bodywork design that utilises neither front nor rear wings. Downforce will instead be developed by the floor of the concept – a full design of which has yet to be unveiled – and through the enclosed wheel arches, the double wishbones suspension connected to which remains fully exposed. As well as reducing drag, the pods around the wide, low profile tyres also serve as a bumper against both barriers and other cars: even in an-all robot motorsport series, apparently ‘rubbin’s racin’ still applies…
No driver means both the cockpit and the roll hoop structures are now redundant, allowing for a sleeker design around a central beam that boasts both an electric propulsion system and the mechanics that control the artificial intelligence ‘driving’ the concept around a circuit. Let’s also not forget the real estate available for commercial branding, pivotal for those ten teams of software engineers being pitted against each other in the first ever ‘Global Championship of Intelligence and Technology’. Sponsored by Apple. Maybe.
The Roborace series – the ‘car of the future’ built by Kinetik – is not the first new addition made to the Formula E circuit for 2016/2017 though, following Jaguar‘s announcement that it will make a full-time return to motorsport with the series.
Source – Roborace
