It’s been a surprise lately to learn how many of my friends are getting up before sunrise on Sundays to watch a Formula 1 race. Most of them have just started following the sport, spurred by the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive, which has finally catalyzed F1’s popularity in the States.
While Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, et al. are becoming household names, I’ve only recently become aware of a fledgling, parallel competition where the cars are all electric! It’s called Formula E, and last weekend they held their NYC “E-Prix” on the streets of Red Hook (Brooklyn).
Not being a motorsports enthusiast, I’ve never thought about the technology behind racecars. I hadn’t realized that the famous F1 cars are all “hybrids”—they use a traditional engine, but (since 2014) also use energy recovery systems which capture heat from braking and exhaust, store it in batteries, and channel it back to the car’s power unit.
Apart from dispensing entirely with traditional engines, Formula E makes use of novel technological and competitive features. Cars are equipped with the capability to use “Attack Mode,” a temporary power boost available during certain stretches of a race (similar to DRS in F1); teams are only told an hour before the start of each race the minimum and maximum times the feature is to be used. More bizarre is “FanBoost,” where pre-race online voting awards three drivers additional power to their cars. That sounds a bit hokey to me, and it seems FanBoost may be eliminated by next year.
Plenty of big names participate in Formula E, including Jaguar, Porsche, Mercedes, Nissan, and NIO. Dutch driver Nyck de Vries, from the Mercedes-EQ team, is the defending champion. Through 3/4ths of the current season (12 of 16 races), the points leader is his Belgian teammate Stoffel Vandoorne.
Beyond racing, though, Formula E is about real-world R&D for automakers. Protocol’s Lisa Martine Jenkins recently outlined how the circuit acts as a proving ground for consumer EV technology:
The race is structured such that “the amount of energy in the battery at the start of a race is not enough to complete the entire race distance.” In order to complete the full race, drivers need to regenerate energy from their cars while slowing down. This energy recuperation process helps determine how fast the cars can make their way around the track, meaning that teams are incentivized to improve their efficiency. Those gains can be extrapolated beyond the race track.
And:
The chargers have to be transportable, lightweight, quick and reliable, according to Michele Cecchini, Enel X Way’s head of e-motorsport, which supplied this year’s chargers. He said the partnership has allowed the company to “test technologies that have later been transferred to road infrastructure.”
To be certain, Formula E is still a niche sport nowhere near F1’s popularity. I even saw an ESPN racing analyst wonder if F1’s surge is bad for Formula E. Maybe it’s a zero-sum game, but hey, maybe it instead spurs a growing appetite for other racing formats, including Formula E.
Drive on!