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Stanford Engineers Taught This Car To Drift Through An Autocross Course

The 1981 DeLorean has been converted into an all-electric autonomous vehicle capable of precision performance that defies human nature.

The Stanford University engineers at Dynamic Design Lab have been perfecting the skill of Autonomous DeLorean Drifting for years. MARTY — a 1981 DeLorean that’s been converted into a drift car that’s both all-electric and autonomous —  has been put through its paces since 2015. That’s the year the car reached its goal of successfully drifting through a series of doughnuts with a precision that defied human ability.


Fast forward to 2019 and the technology behind MARTY again demonstrated finesse and superhuman precision as it successfully navigated MARTYkhana, a racing-like format that combines high speeds with complicated driving conditions. MARTY was built with a number of customizations that allow the vehicle’s performance to be used for research. These include computer-controlled steering that can move through the car’s full range is under one second, 2 GPS antennae that can track the vehicle’s position within 1 inch and a custom suspension that’s designed to endure rapid-fire turns and intense drifts.