New autonomous Audi RS7

Lighter, faster RS7 drives Sonoma track "with uniform precision". Erk.

Remember the Audi RS7 that lapped Hockenheim autonomously and very quickly last year? Quite an achievement. Now it's back with a new colour scheme, a new name (that car was 'Bobby', this is 'Robby'; nope, us neither) and even more performance.

You call this parked? Pah.

This red and black RS7 (surely it should have been Dennis?) is now 400kg lighter than the previous version - shame that couldn't come out of the road car - and has lapped Sonoma raceway in 2:01. Which is pretty damn quick for a twisting 2.5-mile circuit in a road car. Indeed, Audi head of brake, steering and driver assistance development Thomas Muller said the RS7 "turned in lap times that were better than those of sports car drivers".

So it's metronomically fast and precise to a point a human could never be. Very good. What's the point? Well the technology will be in the next A8. Should a driver find themselves "overwhelmed or underwhelmed by driving tasks" then the autonomous tech can assist. For the A8 the piloted driving feature will be able to take full control of the car when parking and in stop-start traffic at up to 37mph. More details on that soon, no doubt. Hopefully there's a video for the RS7 to come as well. Sounds spookily intriguing, right?