Formula E
A couple of days ago, I noticed an article about the first official, FIA-sanctioned, racing series reserved for fully electric cars: Formula E. It will debut next year and the first season is set to consist of ten races, all taking place on street circuits. Currently, the confirmed venues are Rio de Janeiro and Rome, and negotiations are supposedly very advanced for London as well, so there are seven “slots” still open and they’re even asking for suggestions.
What’s rather interesting is that, even though a single team is currently confirmed, cars for ten have already been purchased from the official supplier. That seems to be the upper limit, however, seeing as the article states that if any team will build and develop its own cars, the ones which should have been made available for them will be used for roadshows and other racing activities, so the number of team “slots” won’t be increased. At the same time, if they already have plans for the cars that will remain unused, I assume they’re also considering the possibility of having less than ten teams at the start of the season.
Personally, I find the whole concept very interesting and worth supporting, though it’ll be weird to see them changing cars during the race, seeing as recharging batteries quickly enough was impossible and replacing them was considered unsafe. In endurance racing, the car changes drivers, but Formula E races will apparently last for one hour and during that hour it’ll be the drivers who’ll change the cars. There are hopes that improvements in battery life, recharging technologies or both will eventually make this unnecessary, and when that happens it’ll certainly be a very positive signal for electric cars in general, but for the moment they picked this option and I have to admit that I have some misgivings about it.
Another issue I have with the current plans has to do with racing only on street circuits, which they admit won’t allow the cars to show their true potential. This is even more worrying when connected to the issue mentioned above, because I’m quite sure that this decision was at least in part motivated by the fact that battery life would obviously be even shorter if the races would take place on “proper” circuits, where the cars would reach higher speeds and maintain them for much longer. Or, of course, it may also mask some issues the cars currently have if they’re required to maintain such a high level of performance for longer than the duration of a demonstrative run.
As such, if this racing series was supposed to make people believe that technology will very soon allow fully electric engines to completely replace conventional ones, I fear it isn’t doing a particularly good job at the moment, which is a real pity, seeing as we urgently need clean alternatives in all sectors of transportation. At the same time, the current cars are clearly far from the best they can be, being provided so any team desiring to enter will be able to do so easily, so we can hope for rapid developments in the future. If the series will be properly promoted and sufficient incentives for participation and innovation will be provided, it certainly has a good chance to drive forward the development of the technologies needed to green the transportation sector worldwide.
