- An autonomously driven Maserati MC20 went 197.7 mph, breaking the speed record for a self-driving car.
- The run was a collaboration between the Indy Autonomous Challenge and researchers from Politecnico di Milano.
- The researchers say these types of extreme feats can accelerate self-driving car development.
A self-driving supercar just broke the speed record for an autonomous car by going 197.7 mph at the Kennedy Space Center.
Last month’s feat was a joint project between the Indy Autonomous Challenge, which organizes autonomous-driving competitions between universities, and a team of researchers from Italy’s Politecnico di Milano. The Indy Autonomous Challenge provided the modified Maserati MC20, and the university researchers developed the artificial intelligence software that piloted the car.
Photo by: Maserati
Check out a video of the record-breaking run below. The shots from inside the car are rather mundane, if you’ve been inside of a Waymo or seen videos of those robotaxis before. In 2025, a vehicle without a person in it driving in a straight line is nothing too special. Then the vantage point switches to outside the car, and things get real. Seeing a supercar hurtling down a runway at ungodly speeds with nobody in the driver’s seat is a sight to behold.
But this wasn’t purely about seeing how fast a robot could go. The researchers behind the record say pushing autonomous driving systems to ridiculous speeds and observing how they behave can make self-driving cars safer in more everyday environments too.
“These world speed records are much more than just a showcase of future technology; we are pushing AI-driver software and robotics hardware to the absolute edge,” said Paul Mitchell, CEO of Indy Autonomous Challenge. “Doing so with a streetcar is helping transition the learnings of autonomous racing to enable safe, secure, sustainable, high-speed autonomous mobility on highways.”
Autonomous highway driving sounds way simpler than piloting a self-driving car around a bustling city. And in some ways it is; on a highway, things are pretty predictable and there aren’t cyclists or pedestrians to watch out for. But an autonomous system needs to react much more quickly to hazards if it’s traveling at 65 mph than if it’s dawdling along at 25 mph. That’s the kind of problem these extreme speed tests may help solve, the researchers said.
If you’re still skeptical that these kinds of challenges can have any real-world impact, I’ll leave you with one final fun fact. The DARPA Grand Challenge, an autonomous driving competition funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, sparked the entire self-driving car industry as we know it.
Alumni of DARPA challenges held in the 2000s include Kyle Vogt (founder of Cruise), Dmitri Dolgov (co-CEO of Waymo), Anthony Levandowski (the controversial co-founder of Waymo and, later, head of Uber’s self-driving development) and Chris Urmson (CEO of the autonomous trucking startup Aurora). Who knows what the engineers in this test will go on to do.
Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
