Formula E Buenos Aires ePrix became witness to the first competitive race involving a self-driving car on a professional Formula E Track. Roborace they called it. They race overall went well especially for the car that won.

Roborace is startup  a high-powered self-driving race cars and its goals are testing the boundaries of this developing technology.  When navigating through busy streets and through everyday traffic is a huge challenge and these cars have to handle split second decision making at high speeds.

They are called “Devbots”. They went onto the track for the first time on Saturday. The first was the “RoboCar” and was styled with a slick design. Its designer was Daniel Simon, who is a Hollywood special effects expert. He worked on films such as Tron: Legacy and Captain America: The First Avenger.

A Different Self-Driving Car Design

The Devbot design is not as nice as the Robocar. Devbots have the advantage of being able to be driven by humans or robots. This allows the company to conduct more detailed testing. The most notable part of the race was the high speeds the cars reached. They topped out 115 mph but did not hit over 200 mph which is the speed human drivers reach during Formula E Races. It is still pretty impressive that the cars could handle the complexity of driving at that pace. Some obstacles were put in place while the race went on to test the handling of the vehicles.

The Devbot 2 was doing amazing until it hit a barrier and crashed. Devbot 1 was crowned the winner since it completed the race. The race has not been publicized and there is no official full video of the race. It is hard to say if the race will become popular if a league is created. This is just the beginning of the industry.

So, would you watch these races?

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