A veteran toy racing company is trading slots for smartphone-controlled RC cars

Carrera, a German company that has been making slot car toys since the ‘60s, has announced a new scaled racing experience that does away with the slots altogether. Carrera Hybrid still has you racing 1:50-scale cars around a reconfigurable track, but you control them using an app on a mobile device and you’re now free to steer anywhere you want, even off the track to overtake an opponent.

Carrera Hybrid is already available internationally, but the company is launching a starter set in the US on September 1st for $199.99 that includes a mix of 15 straight and curved track pieces and a pair of Porsche 911 GT3 R racers. The company currently offers a wide selection of licensed vehicles for its traditional slot car products, but plans to expand the Hybrid version with recognizable cars from Mercedes-AMG, Audi, and BMW.

Instead of drawing power from metal rails on the track, the Carrera Hybrid vehicles use rechargeable batteries good for about 30 minutes of racing. Each one connects to a mobile device like a smartphone or a tablet over Bluetooth. You can steer the vehicles by physically turning your device like a steering wheel, but the free accompanying mobile app, available for iOS and Android, can also be paired with a wireless controller making the racing feel more like a video game.

Sensors on the bottom of each car detect printed patterns on the track so the app always knows the position of all the vehicles, and while up to 30 users can race on a single layout, the app limits that to 16 for competitive races where stats are tracked. The free roaming nature of Carrera Hybrid creates more opportunities to overtake opponents while the app increases the realism through sound effects and by letting players fine tune the performance and handling of their vehicles including tire grip and brake sensitivity. The app can also simulate various track conditions for a bigger challenge, or assist less experienced racers with driving aids.

The company says it spent the past few years developing the Carrera Hybrid. It’s reminiscent of Anki Drive that debuted in 2013 with a fixed track layout, and the follow-up, Anki Overdrive, that introduced reconfigurable track layouts in 2015. Overdrive offered a lot of the same features and functionality of Carrera Hybrid, plus AI-controlled opponents, but Anki eventually shut down in 2019. Hopefully, given Carrera has been making racing toys for around 60 years, it will continue to invest in its Hybrid offering and keep the AI-powered racing sets around for a lot longer than Anki did.