FIA Formula E Championship

F1 won't go electric until after electric cars become the main focus of mass car makers. They are only just going small block turbo years after the car makers have all put their eggs in that basket.

And as I don't ever see electric cars being the major sector in mass car making this won't happen. Hybrids and energy recovery on the other hand, that's a different matter.

What FE provides is a stage for a different type of motor sport. Much like there are series for V8 saloons and 1l single seaters, highly modified custom cars and almost stock hatchbacks, electric racing will just become (hopefully) another category. There no reason why it must be this FE style either. Once the technology war has been thrashed out we might see some other series, maybe with spec engines (developed between seasons, rather than in them) to feed FE. Some city cars perhaps? Maybe some super karts. Then the FE race weekend can have its own support series. There is a lot of potential. Imagine going into the centre of London one Sunday to watch 2 FE races, a couple of Nissan Leaf support races, some 14 year olds in Formula Fords with batteries, and some nucases in electric karts all hammering round a street track. It would be great.

So long as the series can throw off the stigma of being electric, and is more than just a gimmick, then it should be fine. The BTCC was slated by many as being boring hatchback racing when all the manufacturers jumped ship, but now its considered a fantastic weekend of motor sport. At the end of the day FE needs to provide great racing. If it does that, it will survive. If it doesn't then it will fail. The fact the cars are electric will be beside the point.
 
I still can't help but feel it will suffer as a live event, the biggest part of attending a live event is the sound, something that just cannot be transferred via your TV in anything approaching a similar manner.

As for actually watching, it's probably better on TV if anything, you can see more than you could live.

Take away the sound of the cars and I think you lose a big reason for people to go - it just sounds like giant electric remote control cars, there's nothing there to get the hair on the back of your neck standing up.

I suspect this is largely why it's being pushed into city tracks - make people travel an hour to silverstone or something and they just won't bother. Put it on their doorstep, almost literally and then they might as well pop over to see.
 
I have absolutely no idea how they would make an all electric car last 24 hours, but I would be very interested in seeing them try.

The GreenGT also looks good.
 
Maybe, but they don't charge quickly, so they would need acres of batteries charged and ready. Also, with current battery tech half a tonne of batteries is only going to give them a limited range, maybe 50 miles at race speed?

But, it could potentially be very interesting to see how it works.
 
F1-e is 300kilos battery and should last 15-20mins at racing speed.
So 1/2 ton should be about 25-33 mins, which means a shed load of pit stops.

You can charge batteries extremely quickly, it just shortens their life span, might not be an issue for a race car, which don't want them to last several thousand cycles.

But we do need new bat tech, plenty in development and plenty of those have proven protoypes, but not every prototype is mass producible. Looking at 2017-2020 before we see any of those in road cars though.
 
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Not sure on your maths there. 20 minutes x 1.66 = 60 minutes? It will be more like 30 minutes.

48 pit stops in a 24 hour race, 1 every 6 laps. I can't see Nissan wanting to stick their name on a 'green' electric car project that produced 25 tonnes of single use battery that gets thrown away after.

If there is truth in this rumour then I expect there's something else clever going on. I do hope so, as that's what Garage 56 is all about.
 
Forgot to divide by half, was working it out per ton.

There's plenty of companies looking at induction charging. But even if e battery could accept the energy in say 30seconds. You would need to store several MWs in a capacitor system to power.
 
I meant in terms of the image at the track. Normal race teams don't have an oil refinery sat out the back of the pits. What are Nissan going to do with massive pile of dead batteries? Throw a sheet over them and pretend they aren't there while hosting their press conference about how electricity is the future?

As with the DeltaWing, Nissan will only stick their name against this project if it makes them look good. Having to constantly answer questions about where the 5 lorry loads of dead batteries are going to go after the race wont be good press for them.

But, if they are willing to take on the challenge and think they can get around the issues of electricity and range, then good luck to them.
 
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Use them next race. They aren't dead batteries.
Nearly all of the car battery packs are made up if standard cells, so can be split down and reused.
 
I suppose that could be one of the good things to come from this series if it's a success, teams/companies having a real effect on the development of batteries and electric power. Not sure pushing it as a green/eco race series is a great idea though.
 
Guerrilla said:
I suppose that could be one of the good things to come from this series if it's a success, teams/companies having a real effect on the development of batteries and electric power. Not sure pushing it as a green/eco race series is a great idea though.
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That'll only happen if you get 2 or 3 big players who are prepared to get into an arms race. At the moment this is looking like a 1 make series with no competition on the hardware front.
 
kaiowas said:
That'll only happen if you get 2 or 3 big players who are prepared to get into an arms race. At the moment this is looking like a 1 make series with no competition on the hardware front.
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Oh yea definitely it'd need some big names willing to throw big money at it... which I guess is why so much rides on it being successful enough fairly early on to attract the big companies.
 
Sweet, racing 12 months a year, as it only partially overlaps with f1
September-June schedual

Opening race will be London, and I'll be trying to get tickets, I doubt it'll be hard, I can't see the viewing figures being great to start with.

Interesting video and I agree with them, I expect it to attract a younger audience and I expect battery tech to improve visibly between season. Maybe get some of these mot prototypes in large enough quantities to race, in which case you could see battery life double in one season.

 
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