
Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series - pedrocr
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/03/racing-goes-electric-at-the-track-with-formula-e-the-first-e-racing-series/
======
jeremyrwelch
Excellent interview with Formula E founder:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrTbdKe0XTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrTbdKe0XTo)

Best quote, when asked if he thought we could end our dependence on oil: "The
stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones."

Really important to understand that this is just the first iteration of their
plan. Goal is to get to single car for a full hour race within a few years.
Agag says they now have many major cities approaching them about participating
in the second year of Formula E, including San Francisco.

Also, the cars are louder than most people realize, at 80 decibels.

~~~
semerda
It's all relative. 80 decibels in the day isn't that loud. It's the sound of a
vacuum cleaner. At night on the other hand 80db is loud. Considering that the
F1 are 140DB the sound differences are massive.

~~~
MarkyC4
Just to add to this, 140dB isn't about twice as loud as 80dB as the units
might lead you to believe, since the scale is logarithmic:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel)

These FE cars are MUCH quieter than their F1 cousins.

~~~
rcxdude
Well, in terms of sound energy, but our hearing is also logarithmic, so 140dB
will sound about twice as loud.

~~~
zik
> an increase of 10db SPL is perceived to be approximately twice as loud

From [http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/2004-About-
dB/](http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/2004-About-dB/)

So it's really 2^6 = 64x as loud, perceptually.

------
mehhhhhhh
Video of the race from the second page:
[https://youtu.be/fvxRqC8UoAs?t=2m55s](https://youtu.be/fvxRqC8UoAs?t=2m55s)

Engine sound is amazing. This is the first time I have heard tire screech in a
race. I wonder why. :-)

The problems seems to be battery capacity. They have to switch cars. Since the
racing is usually done on a closed circuit they could implement inductive
charging in the future( and perhaps power-ups ). Who wouldn't want to watch
that?

~~~
adwn
Here's a video without an annoying commentator, so that you can actually hear
the engine: [https://youtu.be/IptBVdys-mo?t=1m2s](https://youtu.be/IptBVdys-
mo?t=1m2s)

And yes, the engine sound is amazing! It sounds so much more futuristic than
Formula 1.

~~~
Swizec
Color me old-fashioned, but I think this sounds horrible. The noise is
annoyingly like a high-pitched screech. Grating on the ears.

Then again, F1 cars have terrible sound as well. Too high rev to have a nice
sound.

edit: I find it interesting that they have a Senna and a Prost. Coincidence?

edit2: their top speeds are apparently also over 140km/h lower than F1
(225km/h vs. ~360km/h). I wonder why they decided to limit the cars to that
and if it's ever getting raised?

~~~
CHY872
It'll only get raised with additional battery technology, I think. Around a
normal track, where an F1 car will get up to that speed, it will use about
1.7kg of fuel per lap, and this corresponds roughly to about 8kWh per lap,
taking thermal efficiency into account.

Formula E cars have about 200kg of batteries (a Tesla has >500kg), and these
provide about 28kWh - which would run out a little after 3 laps, or perhaps
less than that if the incredibly high rate of discharge caused it to catch
fire. You couldn't feasibly add too much more battery capacity without
weighing the car down too much.

You can get an appreciable fraction of the speed of an F1 car with a fraction
of the power, and the difference is even less noticeable if you're on a street
circuit; for example around Monaco an F1 car will use only 1.2kg fuel, with a
much higher drag aero package.

The Formula E driver lineup is a bit embarrassing, in that almost exactly half
of the drivers are failed or retired F1 drivers.

Also, F1 drivers since the turbos returned are much lower pitched, since they
rev only up to I think 12000rpm now - you might be surprised!

~~~
Swizec
> Also, F1 drivers since the turbos returned are much lower pitched, since
> they rev only up to I think 12000rpm now - you might be surprised!

Oooh that IS exciting! I haven't been paying much attention ever since they
banned V10's, but if turbos are back it might be time to revisit.

And that's really interesting about the batteries. Haven't thought of that but
it does make sense.

------
mapt
What I want to see is not heroic drivers like NASCAR, nor heroic billionaires
investing in very similar tweaks, like Formula 1, but a diversity of creative
conceptual engineering, competing in the same challenges, for lots of money.

Things like DARPA sponsors: The Grand Challenge in self-driving cars, and the
Robotics Challenge. The Ansari X-prize also applies. BattleBots was a decent
attempt at a sport along these lines. Fields where true novelty still exists,
and there are no consistently obvious paths forward.

My impression as a non-fan is that Formula 1 only achieves divergent
innovation on rare occasions, and next season or two everyone is doing it or
it's been banned by the race sponsors.

~~~
f055
You are spot-on! At the moment, F1 has little diversity and lots of
restricting regulations. Formula-E is even worse, with everyone driving the
same cars. NASCAR, or Indy, is not better either.

All the revolution and innovation is in WEC (World Endurance Championship),
it's the one with the Le Mans round. This year, 4 strong competitors arrive in
the top class and this is the series to watch
[http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-
picture...](http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-
pictures/toyota/contenders-ready-porsche-and-toyotas-2015-le-mans-racers-
revealed/)

~~~
daphreak
Everyone is driving the same car only for the first season. Second season they
are opening up the motor and inverter for improvement and modification. In the
third it sounds like the battery will be opened up as well.

My guess is that they want to keep things as competitive as possible between
the drivers. Slowly opening up the playing field for modifications will keep
the races interesting but still foster innovation (at least for the first few
years).

~~~
gsnedders
The main aim with the limited number of allowed modifications is to keep the
cost of entry low, such that the brand new championship actually gets
entrants. It's hard to justify a large budget for an unheard of championship.

~~~
f055
I was really excited for FE, but at the moment is too like gokarts for me. But
if your predictions come true, and they open up everything, I would really
like FE to become as crazy as the innovative F1 years of 70s, 80s and early
90s - where just the speed and winning mattered, without the carbon and safety
levels ruining the sport...

~~~
vl
>too like gokarts for me. But even Formula 1 is essentially pimped-up shifter
gokart.

~~~
f055
Thanks to too restrictive regulations. I miss the times of four-front-
wheelers, gas turbines and vacuum-undercarriage.

------
bitL
As a former avid motorsports fan I believe all motorsport racing forms are
dying as the cars are more and more considered a nuisance by young generations
and they seem to have plateaued with their mechanical capabilities for a
while.

To return fun back to motorsports and enable everyone to compete if they want,
I think best would be to have RC models with realistic characteristics (or
even real cars) and real-time camera/remote driving ability. Most fun nowadays
is in simulators anyway, no TV experience can translate to what one can
experience in a simulator competing against other people (sorry F1). Things
like renting a NASCAR on an oval or Porsche on a Nürburgring aren't for
everyone.

------
exDM69
Formula E's greatest strength is also its biggest weakness: the tracks they
race on. The low noise levels make racing in city centers possible and brings
a big crowd but the races are a bit boring.

In my opinion, the best race footage of Formula E is from their pre-race
testing ("event simulation") where they ran a full field of cars at Donington
Park, a traditional purpose-built race track with long sweeping curves and
significant elevation changes.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQNrtmSnQ1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQNrtmSnQ1I)

~~~
CHY872
City centre racetracks also come from the nature of electric power.

Such tracks are usually much slower, which means that much less energy will be
lost by means of air resistance, and the cars won't have enough space to reach
top speed.

This means they can run for longer, or with higher power.

------
aetherspawn
I just thought I'd chime in for Team Swinburne from Australia, which is a
university team who R&D a brand new electric formula car each year. Amongst
other challenges down here, the electric engines (which can only operate up to
100C) overheating in the 35C Australian ambient is a pretty big one.

Not much of what we need actually exists, so we also engineer our own charging
trolley, battery box and computer systems.

Here's our 2014 car specs: [http://www.teamswinburne.com/the-
car-2014/](http://www.teamswinburne.com/the-car-2014/)

------
jkot
There are limits on everything: acceleration, maximal speed and even noise.
Formula E will be boring same way as Formula 1. Identical cars circling around
the track.

~~~
jmartinpetersen
It seems your data on F-1 are slightly out of date. Yes, the rules are the
same for everyone, but each team optimizes within them differently. As for
identical cars, I guess McLaren only wish they had a car like Mercedes or
Ferrari (or any old car that could actually last an entire race).

~~~
bitL
There is no longer awe associated with breaking records/introducing diverse
tech into motorsports anymore. I guess previous generations had it better as
they could watch how somebody breaks 190, 200, 210, ... mph barrier, run
engines with 900, 1000, 1100hp for the first time, run two sets of rear or
front wheels etc. None of that applies now, motorsports are now regulated and
consolidated. New revival attempts introduce super ugly cars (look at IndyCars
in the past 10 years, or even current Formula E), all mind-blowing racing that
deviates from the norm is now banned (Zanardi's "The Pass" can't happen
anymore), engines can't be pushed to higher hp unless we want to allow
multiple casualties per race, as Firestone Firehawk 600 shown us in 2001 we
already crossed the threshold of what humans can withstand and had to
backtrack... F1 is now boring (who cares that some German guy in a red car
wins?) and mainly a world unto itself with very little connection to the real
world as the rules are a result of decades of political fights (i.e. they
aren't representing technological pinnacle of what is possible rather what
powerful people allowed each other). There were glimmers of interesting things
happening with drifting etc. but they never had mainstream potential. I really
don't see much future in this, the existing motorsports can be probably milked
for a while with a proper marketing strategy, but the future lies elsewhere.

~~~
jkot
> engines can't be pushed to higher hp unless we want to allow multiple
> casualties per race,

We need robots than.

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
It would be interesting to do remote control. I.e. nobody in the car. Two
classes: one with restrictions (i.e. driver must be in control - no assists /
etc. May be tricky to define.), one without (want to go fully computer-
controlled? Sure!).

~~~
andrewchambers
Remote control means you can tweak the scale of the cars/races.

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
Yep.

Although it would be interesting to go "you must have a space where a person
can fit, and if you ever kill the dummy inside you lose the race" (defined a
little more precisely, of course).

Remember: you probably want to keep the scale vaguely car-size. That way
you'll get the most applicable innovation coming out of it. And also that way
it'll tend to be the most interesting to spectators.

------
Htsthbjig
5 gear gearboxes?

WHY?

I have an electrical car. They don't need gearboxes, or probably one gear at
all.

Had they introduced gearboxes so pilots could feel they do something? If so
they don't need gearboxes for that they could manually control the electronics
control of the engine.

That leaves the option of manufacturers of gearboxes wanting electric cars to
use them.

But this is stupid, and make no sense, as it makes the entire car heavyweight
for resisting the torques. They are obsolete. The future is motors on wheels.

~~~
aetherspawn
As I said below, one reason they might run a transmission is so that they
constantly run the engine in the most energy efficient zone (which might vary
by up to 30%), giving them a longer battery life. There are other factors to
consider about whether this is justified, however, like the losses introduced
in the transmission.

Whether the drivers are trained to take advantage of this is another story.

------
Arubis
It's awesome to see this hitting the prime time, but Formula E is far from the
first. The National Electric Drag Racing association
([http://www.nedra.com/](http://www.nedra.com/)) has been around since 1996
and there's all kinds of good tires screeching (and golf cards popping
wheelies).

------
moe
I think they should just remove the drivers and let the engineers compete
freely. That would be much more interesting to watch than the current yawn-
fest of "which human will make the least mistakes on mostly identical cars"...

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
It's rather difficult to do that and keep some semblance of safety.

Ultimately I think the simplest way to keep things sane would be to do
something along the lines of "you have <x> amount of MJ worth of <fuel of your
choice or electrical power> for the race" (which would then spawn all sorts of
related rules about what exactly counts as fuel, but meh. Such is life.).

~~~
moe
_It 's rather difficult to do that and keep some semblance of safety._

Huh? But that's partly the point, what do you need safety for when there's no
drivers?

Build a strong cage around the track so the spectators don't get hurt when a
car lifts off at 400mph. And set hefty fines for when a robocar damages
another robocar, so the participants are incentivized to win by racing rather
than by elimination (which might actually be an interesting sub-genre of its
own, though).

And then let's just see how far the engineers can bend physics when they _don
't_ have to throttle everything down to accommodate for human safety and
reflexes...

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
Oh, thought you were talking about driver-d cars.

With driverless cars, I agree.

------
WalterBright
My kind of car sound:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPXHIMHIcvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPXHIMHIcvQ)

------
discardorama
I don't understand one thing: why do all cars have to be exactly the same?
Here's a better idea: just set some specifications on the vehicles, and let
the teams do their best to work within those specs. At the end of the season,
all cars are open-sourced, so you can see what the others did. Come next
season, the teams will have incorporated the best practices from the previous
season and improved upon them. Rinse, lather, repeat.

~~~
ourmandave
It's like NASCAR, not about the car but the skill of the driver.

Otherwise it becomes who has the better funding to afford the best engineering
team and money for the lightest and strongest parts.

~~~
discardorama
But even NASCAR has teams of engineers trying to find legal (or questionable)
tweaks. At this stage, when technical advances are needed, having a more open
model might be better.

~~~
pauldino
If I understand it right that'll get going from the second season on.

"From season two, Formula E will operate as an 'open championship', allowing
teams and manufacturers the opportunity to showcase their own electrical
energy innovations. Working to the technical specifications set out by the
FIA, teams will focus their efforts on improving and developing powertrains
and battery technology, with the aim of this filtering into the everyday
electric vehicle market."

[http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/guide/overview.aspx](http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/guide/overview.aspx)

------
semerda
If you ever been to a F1 it is the sound and smell of burning fossil fuels
that adds to the energy and excitement of watching the race.

I would not pay to just watch electrics race. 3 years ago at MotoGP they had
electrics race and it drew little crowd. For consumer use yes I am totally for
electrics but for the race track it will destroy the spirit of a Formula race.

KERS is a great addition to the petrol motors but not a full electric
replacement.

------
rasz_pl
Cars sound like the future.

They want to aim at the younger crowd, but fail technologically. Its 2015,
there should be live streaming from every cars front and back camera during
the race.

------
usaphp
I don't know, those tires look hideous and the sound...the best thing I love
about formula 1 is engine sound, these e-formula cars look and sound like a
bunch of my son's remote control toys on a track. I don't find it exciting to
watch

