Roborace sets a Guinness World Record for fastest autonomous car

Mostly when we think of autonomous vehicles, we think of ordinary road cars converted to be self-driving development vehicles or slow, built-to-purpose development rigs that will become delivery vehicles. We don't think of self-driving cars as being fast.

Apparently, nobody else did either, because the Roborace series was able to set a brand-new record for the fastest autonomous car over a two-run average at an airfield in the UK. Now, just because there was no previous record holder doesn't mean that Roborace could show up, phone it in with freeway speeds and snag itself a Guinness World Record.

In fact, the folks at Guinness decided -- and we assume this was somewhat arbitrary -- that to be recorded as a world record, it had to beat a top speed of 160 mph. The Roborace folks were undeterred, basically told the Guinness folks to hold their beer (get it, because nobody was driving?) and laid down an average top speed of 175.49 mph.

Now, 175.49 mph isn't exactly blisteringly fast, especially when you consider that Bugatti just set a production car speed record of 304 mph. I mean, a base-model Porsche 911 Carrera will do 187 mph right off the showroom floor, but both the Porsche and the Bugatti had humans behind the wheel, so the Roborace record is still pretty damned cool.

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