Siemens Autonomous Ford Mustang Drives Up Famed Goodwood Hill Like A Drunk Grandpa

Siemens really thought that when it brought its sweet looking classic 1965 Mustang to the Goodwood Hill Climb that it would fly up the hill and do autonomous cars proud. It ended up driving up the hill in spectacularly poor fashion. At least the Mustang looked good sitting on the starting line.

The autonomous Mustang had very little in the way of autonomous tech compared to the cars we are used to seeing in testing with giant masses of cameras and sensors on the roof and other locations. The Mustang uses GPS and what appears to be a single camera to determine where it was on the road. Whoever thought this was going to be a good demonstration probably got a stern talking to after the event.

You can hear on the video the announcers talking about the system and noting that the GPS receiver had about a 1-meter range of accuracy. The literal rub with Goodwood is that the road is very narrow, and that single meter of error is enough to put you into the wall. There is also talk of some sort of interference from the cameras causing issues for the car.

Surprisingly despite knowing all this, the Siemens team went ahead with the demo and no one was impressed. The video is a nearly six-minute cringe fest, but worth a watch. At least the Mustang didn’t become another meme by crashing into the crowd. The safety driver did have to take over quite a few times to keep the car on the tarmac. The constant weaving up the track would presumably be due to that 1-meter of error in position from the GPS system.