In series production, hardware for rapid control prototyping is only used during development and prototyping, whereas the final products are equipped with embedded controllers. Equipment for prototyping is typically more robust (#1) and more flexible (#2) but also a bit heavier than embedded controllers (#3). While Formula Student teams do not care much about #1 and #2, the teams and Speedgoat jointly worked on hitting the weight targets, #3. In race mode, teams use the Baseline in an open frame configuration with custom housing and cooling.
Moving the needle towards using a real-time target machine for the control development of a race car, is the tight interface to Simulink via Simulink Real-Time™. It takes minutes to go from design iteration to deployed algorithm running in the vehicle, enabling extremely high development speeds. You need "Simulink and the Speedgoat libraries, and no other software or interface," says Daniel.
Even auxiliary tasks such as post-processing or logging data can be performed by running a MATLAB script or using an app created via MATLAB App Designer. The latter especially helps MATLAB inexperienced team members change between car setups, driver profiles, do parameter tuning, and data processing.