When Formula E first buzzed down the streets of Beijing back in 2014, electric vehicles (EVs) were still a novelty, not a necessity. Back then, electric cars made up less than 0.5 per cent of new cars sold, but that wasn’t enough to deter the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile and the Spanish businessman Alejandro Agag from starting a global race series dedicated to their development.
Breezing onto the scene with lofty ambitions, Formula E promised to not only revolutionise motor racing but also the way we drive. The former team owner and British businessman Sir Richard Branson even boldly declared that it would overtake Formula One, in terms of the number of people coming to see it, “in just a handful of years”.
Alongside offering audiences an entirely new form of motorised entertainment, it also presented carmakers with a laboratory-like arena to test and develop future roadgoing technology, attracting the likes of Audi, Renault and Mahindra from the off. Since then, its ranks of manufacturers have swelled, much like its acceptance and fanbase – but has any of this trickled down to roadgoing EVs in the past decade?
Celebrating its season finale in London, with a double-header race in the city’s Docklands this weekend, fans will see the likes of Porsche, Jaguar, Mahindra, Nissan, McLaren, Maserati and DS go wheel to wheel in the battle for championship titles.
While Formula E still boasts an enviable list of prestigious car makers, it wasn’t long ago that motorsport masters Mercedes and BMW were also part of the line-up until they exited to focus on other, combustion-powered race series. It was something of a golden era for Formula E, enjoying similar levels of manufacturer interest to the British Touring Car Championship in the 1990s; the old “race on Sunday, sell on Monday” adage ringing in the ears of car companies eager to prove their electric models could excite as well as go the distance.
“From 2025, we’re an all-electric car company and this is the pinnacle of electric racing, so for us, it’s a long-term investment,” says Jaguar’s long-standing team principal James Barclay, at the Monaco E-Prix this season. “We have racing in our DNA, so it’s a great platform to show our technology innovation and to write the next chapter.
“When we formed the team back in 2016, we talked about returning Jaguar to a credible World Championship contending team, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Moments after Barclay uttered those words, the team went on to secure a one-two finish around the historic harbour, catapulting Jaguar to the top of the teams’ championship standings, where it remains today ahead of the final rounds.
While the series ticks a box for the storied British brand in returning it to competitive motorsport, Barclay stresses the marque’s participation is more than a branding exercise. Teaming up with silicon carbide specialist company Wolfspeed in 2017, the company has worked with the team to improve efficiency in the marque’s pair of Jaguar I-TYPE 6 Formula E racers. “Two years ago, we announced future Jaguar Land Rover vehicles will use the same silicon carbide battery technology, so that’s a great example of technology which transferred from the race to the road,” he says.
For German performance car powerhouse Porsche, it’s a similar story. Entering the championship in 2019, the manufacturer says it has used the series to improve its understanding of energy management. Setting itself apart from the competition, Formula E requires drivers to carefully manage the amount of energy they consume, balancing regeneration (harnessing the energy from braking) with outright pace and flat-out performance. It might not be its sexiest selling point but it’s hugely relatable to any everyday driver who has tried to eke out the range of an EV. After all, range anxiety takes on a whole new dimension when there’s a World Championship title at stake.
“For most of a Formula E race, over 40 per cent of the total amount of energy needed for a race is regenerated – sometimes even half of the energy,” says a spokesperson for Porsche’s Formula E team, ahead of the London final. “If you look at the latest new generation Taycan all-electric sports car, we made a jump from 290kW of maximum regeneration to 400kW. This is quite an interesting area of development as the potential of ‘finding energy’ to put back in the battery is huge.”
Back at Porsche’s development base in Weissach near Stuttgart, the Formula E team’s engineers sit shoulder to shoulder with those working on road car projects, “so the exchange [in both directions] takes place every single working day”, insists the marque.
Over in Japan, Nissan’s Formula E team has roots dating back to Renault’s involvement in the inaugural season, before the Japanese mass manufacturer took over in 2018. By then, the marque’s bestselling electric car, the Leaf, was already well established but the brand saw Formula E as a way of getting closer to customers.
“With Formula E, it’s all about zero emissions and electric, but the real key for us is that fan engagement,” said Gareth Dunsmore, Nissan’s European boss for electric vehicles, to Automotive News at the time. “There is a big difference between seeing something on TV and experiencing it or hearing about it from a friend or from a family member who has engaged with it.”
Since their arrival, Jaguar, Porsche and Nissan have all remained in the series, pledging their allegiance to another four years in the sport, extending through to at least 2030. That will see them through the next major regulation change, which will usher in the GEN4 era car sporting 600kW of power – a 250kW upgrade on the series’ current GEN3 car.
Doubling down on its investment, Nissan installed Tadashi Nishikawa, formerly responsible for the development of passenger cars in Japan, as the team’s chief powertrain engineer at the beginning of the year. “It’s my job to bring the philosophies of the two together, to help us all develop on both the Formula E and passenger vehicle operations, improving our output across the board,” says Nishikawa. “In terms of efficiency and power density, Formula E operates at a much higher level, compared to road cars. This means we can see what is possible if we only focus on performance. Then, we can think about how to adapt for passenger vehicles.”
While Formula E is yet to challenge its combustion-engined cousin for superiority in the world of motorsport, it has defied the odds and surpassed an all-important milestone in its mission to accelerate the adoption of EVs. Ten years on, the world of all-electric driving looks vastly different to how it did in 2014. As of 2022, the global market share of electric passenger vehicles was 14 per cent compared with less than half a per cent 10 years earlier, with global EV sales reaching almost 14 million in 2023 alone.
While this rapid rise of electric cars is the result of an almost perfect storm of cultural change, government legislation and technological innovation, Formula E can take some credit for convincing the motorsport community that there’s a bright future beyond combustion engines. With close-quarters racing around tight, city circuits and a respectable line up of top-end drivers, it’s an unpredictable and engaging series to follow.
Despite the recent revival of Formula One, Formula E still has a sizable fanbase and the support of hard-hitting manufacturers. As far as sports series go, the all-electric championship has survived the wilderness “start-up” years and is still in its infancy compared with 74-year-old Formula 1.
Time will tell if Formula E can shift up a gear and gain more traction in the sports community, but as long as the clock keeps ticking on the combustion engine Formula E will always have one thing working in its favour.
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