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A self-driving race car made an abrupt turn and crashed into a wall as soon as it started during the first live broadcast of Roborace, an autonomous-vehicle race series.
Four of six teams failed to finish the three-lap time-trial race held in the United Kingdom.
This harmless vehicular faceplant comes as several companies are expanding their testing of self-driving technology on public roads.
Here’s your daily reminder that a future filled with self-driving cars isn’t as imminent as some might like you to believe. In the first live broadcast of the Roborace autonomous-vehicle race series, one self-driving car left the starting grid and immediately veered into the pit-lane wall. For Acronis SIT Autonomous, the Swiss team fielding the car, the race was literally over before it began. Their car never made it across the starting line.
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The vehicular faceplant came during the first event of what Roborace is calling Season Beta, in which six teams compete in three-lap time-trial races with electric cars driving through a mixed-reality “metaverse.” As they lap real-world racetracks, the cars are also supposed to avoid virtual obstacles and drive through virtual collectibles. Some teams, however, chose to plow through the virtual walls and take time penalties in favor of setting a faster lap time. Unfortunately for Acronis SIT Autonomous, the wall its car tried to drive through was very real. The car sustained significant damage to the nose in the impact. Ilya Shimchik, the team principal, told broadcasters that it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the car to crash. Roborace teams all use the same spec cars, known as DevBot 2.0, but develop their own software that controls the vehicle.

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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Roborace had planned to conduct Season Beta events without spectators for the sake of safety, so the crash at the Thruxton Circuit in the United Kingdom only endangered a few egos while providing schadenfreude for those of us who can now watch the video over and over. But this mishap is also a reminder that self-driving technology is still in its infancy, even as several companies expand their testing on American roads with much higher stakes. Waymo is in the process opening its driverless ride-hailing service in suburban Phoenix to more riders. Cruise, the self-driving technology subsidiary of General Motors, recently announced that it plans to begin testing autonomous vehicles without safety drivers by the end of 2020. More disconcerting, Tesla has rolled out its Full Self-Driving feature as unfinished beta software to select owners, who now need to maintain constant vigilance over a technology that’s meant to lull them into inattention. These Tesla drivers will now be doing a job normally reserved for trained professionals on the same roads used by unsuspecting, non-consenting American drivers.

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GM Defense will build lightweight infantry vehicles for the U.S. Army that are based on the Chevrolet Colorado pickup.
The $214 million contract will cover at least 649 and eventually more than 2700 of the nine-passenger vehicles.
The vehicles will be based on the ZR2 and use 90 percent off-the-shelf components, and they’ll weigh a mere 5000 pounds.

GM Defense

In June, GM Defense signed a deal to build 649 Infantry Squad Vehicles for the U.S. Army. The contract was the culmination of a three-way competition in which GM Defense, Oshkosh Defense/Flyer, and SAIC/Polaris were each budgeted $1 million to develop a lightweight nine-passenger off-road troop carrier. The contract, which totals $214,297,869, means that each of these sweet Colorados will cost $330,197. They might build as many as 2065 more over the next eight years, should they get the go-ahead. The 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will be the first recipient of the Battle Bison, as we’re calling it.

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GM started building trucks for the military in 1914, sending 90 percent of its trucks to the front in World War I. More recently, in the the 1980s, they built more than 70,000 lightly militarized Blazers and Silverados: the Commercial Utility Cargo Vehicle (CUCV). Plenty of those are now in private hands, their naturally aspirated 6.2-liter diesels still grumbling away. So the ISV continues a long tradition of modifying GM trucks for military duty.
Based on the ZR2 and using 90 percent off-the-shelf components, the nine-passenger ISV weighs only 5000 pounds, which means that a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter can carry it on a sling. It’ll also fit in the cargo hold of a CH-47 Chinook. The last diesel ZR2 we tested weighed 4975 pounds, and you can see how they kept the weight in check while adding four seats and a steel roll cage—they Mad Maxed it and ditched most of the body.

GM Defense

GM Defense brags that it only took 120 days to go from contract to delivery, but in this case “delivery” means that eight initial vehicles have been sent to the army’s test center in Aberdeen, Maryland, where they’ll undergo further validation—you know, get tossed out of planes and whatnot. That’s actually one of the requirements: “low-velocity air drop by fixed-wing C-130 or C-17 transport aircraft.” Those Multimatic spool dampers are about to get a workout. If all goes according to plan, the 82nd Airborne will start taking deliveries in four months.
Specs
Specs are thin—classified intel, need to know, you know—but the ISV design challenge specified a payload of 3200 pounds, plenty to accommodate nine passengers plus gear. All the ISVs will use the Colorado’s 2.8-liter diesel four-cylinder paired with a six-speed automatic and front and rear locking differentials. The factory power rating is 186 horsepower and 369 lb-ft of torque, but we’d suspect this little Duramax is cranking out somewhat higher numbers than that. In one GM video, we see the ISV sliding into a corner while belching a cloud of black smoke from its exhaust, and stock ZR2s don’t roll coal. That suggests more fuel being burned and a distinct lack of emissions equipment, which would make sense for a weight-constrained military off-road vehicle.

Justin Cesler/GM Defense

Adding some power would solve our biggest gripe with the Duramax Colorado, which is that it’s slow. It makes sense that the ISV uses the 2.8 Duramax rather than the gas 3.6-liter V-6. The military likes diesels, since it simplifies logistics to have the big stuff—like MRAPs—using the same fuel as the smaller stuff. (The U.S. Army even has diesel Polaris RZRs and diesel Mercury outboards.)
Interestingly, GM Defense also collaborated with the army’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center to build a concept Colorado, the ZH2, powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that can export up to 50 kW of power to run electrical equipment in remote locations. It also generates up to two gallons of water per hour—its only emission—which could be useful, too.
The initial numbers may be limited, but we’re already looking forward to the day when these things follow the path of the CUCV and Humvee and start trickling into military surplus auctions. But for now, if you want to drive one, you might have to jump out of a plane first.
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