Formula E: What Electric Racing Performance About?
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Formula E: What Electric Racing Is Teaching Us About Performance EVs
For years, one of the lazy criticisms of electric vehicles was that they might be practical, but they would never have the character or performance of serious petrol-powered machinery.
Formula E has spent more than a decade making that argument increasingly difficult to sustain.
The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship began racing in 2014 as the world's first international all-electric single-seater championship. The original cars were interesting partly because of their limitations. Battery capacity was such that drivers actually changed cars during races.
That seems almost prehistoric now. Formula E has become a very serious electric performance laboratory.
For somebody like Graeme Manietta, who has spent years working with electric motors, batteries, controllers, regenerative braking and vehicle integration, that is where Formula E becomes particularly interesting.
"I am not only interested in who wins the race. I am interested in what the cars are teaching us".
Graeme Manietta.
Electric Performance Is Different
An electric performance car is not simply a petrol race car with the engine removed and an electric motor installed.
Electric propulsion changes the possibilities. Torque can be delivered almost immediately. Motor output can be altered electronically with enormous precision. Regenerative braking can recover energy while also influencing vehicle behaviour.
Multiple motors can be controlled independently. Power delivery can increasingly become part of the steering and handling strategy. Software becomes as important as hardware.
Battery temperature, discharge rates, inverter performance and energy management all become fundamental to how fast a vehicle can actually travel.
That is why electric motorsport interests Graeme. It forces engineers to deal with the entire system.
From 200kW to 600kW
The progress inside Formula E itself gives some idea of how quickly electric performance technology is moving. The first-generation Formula E car produced a maximum of around 200kW and had a top speed of approximately 225km/h.
GEN2 increased maximum power to 250kW.
GEN3 pushed that to 350kW and introduced up to 600kW of regenerative braking capacity.
Now Formula E is preparing for its GEN4 era.
The new GEN4 car is designed to produce 450kW in normal race conditions and up to 600kW in Attack Mode, equivalent to roughly 800 horsepower.
Its projected top speed is around 335km/h.
Formula E says it will accelerate from 0 to 100km/h in approximately 1.8 seconds. That is proper performance by any definition.
The Really Interesting Number Is 700kW
Top speed and acceleration make good headlines. Graeme finds another GEN4 figure just as interesting.
700kW of regenerative braking.
Regeneration is sometimes explained to road-car drivers simply as a way of putting a little energy back into the battery when the vehicle slows.
"At this level, it is much more than that. Formula E expects more than 40 per cent of the energy used during a race to be recovered through regenerative braking. That means energy management is not something happening in the background. It is part of the race. How aggressively can energy be recovered? How much can the battery accept? What does that do to temperatures? How does regen affect braking balance? How does the control system blend regeneration with the behaviour the driver needs from the car? Those are precisely the kinds of questions that make electric vehicle engineering so interesting". Graeme Manietta.
Four Driven Wheels
GEN4 also introduces active all-wheel drive throughout the race.
Again, this is not simply about putting more power through four tyres.
When electric motors and sophisticated controls are involved, engineers gain another layer of authority over what the vehicle is doing.
Torque can be managed electronically. Front and rear drive can respond to conditions.
Regeneration becomes part of that control strategy. The relationship between propulsion, braking and handling becomes much closer than it is in a traditional drivetrain.
Formula E and the FIA describe GEN4 as the biggest technical performance step in the championship's history.
This is one of the areas Graeme is keen on and will be watching very closely.
Performance Is Also About Keeping the Battery Alive
Anyone can make an electric motor produce impressive torque for a few seconds. That isn't the difficult part.
The challenge is making an entire electric system continue delivering what you want from it. A high-performance battery has to deliver enormous current without excessive voltage sag, heat or degradation.
The inverter has to manage that power. Motors need appropriate cooling.
Connections, busbars, cabling and protection systems all have to cope with the load. Then you have to regenerate enormous amounts of energy back into the system under braking.
And you need to repeat it. Lap after lap. That is engineering. A car that produces enormous power once on a dyno is interesting.
A vehicle that can deliver, control, cool, recover and repeatedly redeploy that power is something else entirely.
Software Has Become a Performance Component
One of the most important changes in modern EVs is that performance is increasingly determined by software.
The mechanical components still matter enormously, but software decides how much of their capability the driver can actually use.
Power delivery. Traction. Regenerative braking. Torque distribution. Thermal limits. Battery protection. Motor control. Energy strategy.
Increasingly, the personality of a high-performance EV lives partly in code.
Formula E has already demonstrated this with generations of vehicles where improvements in control systems, regeneration and energy management have produced huge gains without simply making everything bigger and heavier.
That lesson transfers directly to road vehicles.
Racing Has Always Been a Test Laboratory
Motorsport has always accelerated engineering.
Braking systems, tyres, aerodynamics, engine management, materials and countless other technologies were pushed hard in competition before becoming ordinary parts of road cars.
Electric motorsport is doing the same thing now. Formula E deliberately allows manufacturers to develop areas that have direct relevance to production vehicles, particularly powertrains and control systems.
That is why major manufacturers participate. They are not simply putting logos on race cars. They are learning. Not everything developed for a Formula E car belongs in your daily driver. But the principles matter.
Better motors. More efficient inverters. Smarter regeneration. Better thermal management. More sophisticated torque control. Higher power density. Better battery management. Those lessons eventually move beyond racing.
There Is Still Something Missing From the EV Conversation
Most public discussion about electric cars remains focused on range, charging time and efficiency. All important.
But electric vehicles can also be enormously exciting machines. That part of the story deserves more attention.
People who grew up with motorsport, performance cars, hot rods and modified vehicles are not necessarily looking for a transport appliance.
They want something that makes them grin when they put their foot down.
Electric propulsion is perfectly capable of doing that.
In some areas, it opens possibilities that combustion drivetrains never had.
That is why Oz Electric Vehicles is going to spend more time looking at the performance end of this industry. Formula E is one place to start.
We Will Be Following It
"From here, we intend to follow Formula E more closely, but from an engineering perspective rather than simply reporting race results. When something interesting appears, we want to pull it apart".
Graeme Manietta.
What are they doing with batteries? What are they doing with cooling? How is regeneration changing? How are motors being controlled?
What does active all-wheel drive really give the driver? Where does torque vectoring go next? Which technologies have genuine road-car applications?
And perhaps most importantly:
What does all of this tell us about how much performance is still available from electric vehicles?
Because Graeme suspects we are nowhere near the limit yet.
Graeme Manietta, Founder, Oz Electric Vehicles
EV Builder • Battery Specialist • Conversion Engineer • EV Troubleshooter
Nearly two decades working hands-on with electric vehicle technology.
Battery Upgrades • Diagnostics • BMS/BCU Integration • EV Conversions • Specialist EV Engineering