This year, Formula Student Germany had a new class for driverless cars. ETH Zurich's runs:
Run 1 - 2h59m
Run 2 - 5h42m
Personally, I thought FS/FSAE is beneficial but not crucial experience for students wanting to get into the industry. Aside from well-funded and (too) professionally-organised teams coming from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, my experience is it's mostly kids who all think they're the next Newey or Reynard doing whatever they want, without proper feedback or academic supervision. I have heard that racing teams don't always prefer students who spent all their 7 years of undergraduate (
) doing FS, because then they're already stuck in a certain mindset whether it's right or wrong. Besides, building and racing "traditional" race car has been going on for a long time, so doing "traditional" FS is somewhat derivative and at best, an academic exercise.
But with the growth of electric competition, and now the driverless competition, things are completely different. These kids will be the experts in this field, simply because there is so little of the industry out there. It's exciting times for sure. I'm just glad, for my own job security, that even electric and driverless cars would need a chassis and four wheels. For now anyway.