McLaren To Embrace Autonomous Tech, Vows It’ll Still Build Driver’s Cars

For family cars and high-end luxury vehicles, autonomous technologies make perfect sense, offering improved safety and a much more relaxed driving experience for those who simply use their cars for transportation and not entertainment.

However, for sports cars, autonomous driving systems seem like the perfect recipe to spell the end of driver involvement.

Thankfully, automakers like McLaren know their existence depends on that and will only use autonomous tech in innovative ways to aid in safety without detracting from driving pleasure.

According to McLaren Automotive’s global corporate communications manager Duncan Forrester, they will employ such technologies in certain circumstances while still allowing drivers to take full control at the press of a button.

Speaking to Motoring, Forrester said “We have to find our way [through the autonomous car revolution] and I suspect what will probably happen is that some of the main roads, where safety is difficult, we will have an autonomous mode. You press a button and everybody is on autonomous mode.

“Then you get to back roads or wherever and turn it off and go and have some fun,” he revealed.

He also said that autonomous technology could be used on a racetrack to help educate drivers on the correct racing lines, if software was uploaded to the car of a perfect lap for example.