No, this is not a cheesy 'Back To The Future' reference. Students from Standford University have built an autonomous self-drifting DeLorean. And to make it even more impressive, it runs on electricity only.

Nicknamed MARTY, or Multiple Actuator Research Test bed for Yaw control, Chris Gerdes and his students created this to create the development of better autonomous driving algorithms. No, they aren't mad. They figured that algorithms that allow for some sacrificing of stability in some situations are better for avoid-accident maneuvering.

Gerdes believes that the best rally drivers do this all the time and they sacrifice stability so they can use all of the car's capabilities to avoid obstacles and negotiate tight turns at speed. He also said that current control systems designed to assist a human driver, however, don't allow this sort of maneuvering and thought that it is important to open up this design space to develop fully automated cars that are as safe as possible." An autonomous car that drifts to avoid accidents? Sounds like fun to us!

While the car is no drift champion, it is still pretty cool to watch a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 do dounts!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=89&v=WNIDcT0Zdj4