We honestly can’t wait for cars that are able to (safely) drive themselves and the various car manufacturers are certainly attempting to oblige us with more impressive demonstrations of the autonomous vehicles being seen all the time. The latest, and certainly most incandescent we’ve seen to date, is an Audi RS 7 concept vehicle that spend some time taking a lap at the Hockenheim Ring in Germany.
‘Big deal’, you say, ‘we’ve seen driverless cars before. Yes, you have but not like this. The RS 7 concept was completely driverless throughout the event, other than the GPS information and cameras in the car itself that was used to make its way around the track.
The end result was a thrilling lap around the track (which starts at about the 14:15 minute mark in the video above if you’re not keen on the other fluff) with race lines being adhered to. The top speed of this driverless car was about 240km/h, which suits it for a Johannesburg highway, really.
While we’re aware that getting a driverless car to perform on a closed track is simpler than taking it out on the road, Audi’s ‘piloted driving’ is just the start for the company, though they say that they’re going to be making a self-driving function an optional extra rather than the main focus of a vehicle.
Source: Audi (YouTube) via The Verge