Allen Richards' Blog: This Is the Design for Roborace’s Self-Driving Race Car

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-We first learned about Formula E’s plan to launch an autonomous racing series a few months ago. At the time, not much was known about the plan, but as ludicrous as racing cars that drive themselves might sound, the organizers insisted they were serious.
-They even went so far as to hire a man named Daniel Simon to design the race cars. Simon is best known for his work designing the light cycles in Tron: Legacy, but he’s also designed the Bubbleship in Oblivion and used to work for Bugatti. He certainly seemed like the kind of guy who could design a pretty cool driverless race car, but we had no idea what it would look like until now.

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RoboraceCar

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While these are definitely renderings, the release makes it sound like this is pretty much what the production version is going to look like. And as wild as it is, it also looks pretty cool.

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“My goal was to create a vehicle that takes full advantage of the unusual opportunities of having no driver without ever compromising on beauty. Racing engineers and aerodynamicists have worked with me from the beginning to strike that balance,” Simon says.

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In the release, Simon claims the car generates “substantial downforce” and goes on to elaborate that the team is “currently developing active body parts that are more organic and seamless than solutions today.” What that will end up looking like, we couldn’t tell you, but we might get a look during the 2016/2017 Formula E season, which is when the first Roborace demonstrations are scheduled to take place.

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