Charge

Roborace, a completely self-driving racing championship, is trying to achieve a hugely complex task – cars that compete and overtake each other using only AI. To add to the difficulty, the car is also electric.

Now, in a bid to increase the number of electric vehicles on the roads and boost the technology used in this championship, the team behind the robotic racer is releasing a new electric truck.


Unveiled at the WIRED 2016 conference in London, Denis Sverdlov, CEO of Roborace and Charge said the truck will be built in 2017. It can be built in four hours by just one person, Sverdlov added, and this means 10 men, over two shifts a day could assemble 10,000 trucks a year.

Charge

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The firm has been building trucks ranging from 3.5 tonnes to 26 tonnes and is designing all of its vehicles to be in line with electric vehicle legislation in London and the UK.

For the first 100 miles the truck travels, it produces 'zero emissions,' the company claims. "For longer journeys, a dual mode can be used to ‘top up’ the battery and extend the range to 500 miles". The trucks will be built at a series of new factories in Oxfordshire over the next few years.



“We find trucks today totally unacceptable," Sverdlov said in a statement.


"We are removing all the barriers to entry for electric vehicles by pricing them in line with conventional trucks, giving every fleet manager, tradesman or company, no matter how big or small, the opportunity to change the way they transport goods and make our towns and cities better places to live in.”

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Charge is also working closely with Roborace to develop electronic components for the electric autonomous car.


Roborace is a planned driverless series that will see 10 teams compete to develop the best artificially intelligent cars. The vehicles will race at the same events – though not the same races – as those of the electric league Formula E.

Sverdlov told WIRED last year that the cars would be able to travel up to 300kmph as it moves around the track.

So far the company has revealed its 'DevBot' a prototype testing vehicle (in the video above) that it has been driving autonomously around Silverstone Circuit in Northamptonshire.