The Alternative Universe Electric F1 Series

July 10, 2024 1:53 PM

Why You Should Start Caring About Formula E, The Alternative Universe Electric F1 Series is an excellent primer on Formula E Racing, the cars, its history, and similarities and differences to traditional Formula 1 racing. The article also covers "the penultimate rounds of season 10 at Portland International Raceway in Oregon where a pair of races took place on the final weekend of June 2024."
posted by slogger (32 comments total)

one of the unique aspects of an FE race is attack mode. Attack mode is sort of a real-life version of the boost pads in Mario Kart. When Mario Kart players run over a boost pad on the track, they get a temporary increase in speed
🏎️...
posted by HearHere at 2:08 PM on July 10 [2 favorites]

Got confused for about 5 minutes there thinking this was about those diabolically poor AI cars. Kept seeing photos in the article of people inside them and got really puzzled as to why they had realistic-looking fake drivers in them. Clearly it's bedtime.
posted by pipeski at 2:35 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

Unlike most other forms of racing, hearing protection isn’t necessary because, while the cars aren’t silent, they are much quieter. The sound they do make as they whoosh past is a higher-pitched whine from the motors and gears that isn’t too dissimilar from a Tie Fighter in Star Wars.

example

Giving it a listen myself, it's less like the TIE fighter's mid-pitched eagle WOAAAARRHHHHH and much more like the high-pitched whine of a fast RC car, but louder.
posted by neuracnu at 2:36 PM on July 10

That was more interesting than I thought. There's a lot of cleverness with the rules and tech.

The cars now start each race with only 60% of the energy they will need to run the full distance. The other 40% must come from regenerative braking during the race.

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:53 PM on July 10 [2 favorites]

They sound like dental drills. They could sound like anything, but they got that.

The 60% energy thing sounds physically impossible. Where does the energy from regenerative braking come from?
posted by scruss at 2:57 PM on July 10 [2 favorites]

Where does the energy from regenerative braking come from?
”Electric motors can operate in two different modes. With Drive selected, when you press the accelerator pedal, the motor will drive the wheels in a forward direction in order to move the car. As you lift your foot off the accelerator pedal, the momentum of the vehicle turns the motor into a generator, inducing a current which is then fed back to the battery.
”When you then press the brake pedal, the electrical resistance of the motor is increased, slowing you down faster but also generating even more current to top up the battery." [autoexpress]
posted by HearHere at 3:10 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

The 60% energy thing is just saying that if you didn't have regenerative braking, your energy efficiency would only be enough to go 60% of the distance. You need to get your net energy efficiency high enough to stretch that over the other 40%.

Normal EVs factor this into their stated efficiency numbers, so if you're expecting 200 Wh/km that is already assuming regenerative braking. Consumer vehicles would never be described as "400km range, well actually it only starts with 72% of the energy to go 400km but..."
posted by allegedly at 3:48 PM on July 10

I've been suspicious of FIA in this arena. When I first learned about it, FE seems like the type of thing to prevent competition, get minimal attention, and suffer from arbitrary limits to ensure track times remain slow even compared to Formula 2, and then get gutted after 10 - 15 years. But if races extend to 50-70 laps and engine power continues to improve... could these races compete with F1 in viewership?

But who cares what I think. Despite my new found love of indoor karting,* I'll probably never be the target audience for any racing series. TBH, I've failed to get into racing so many times. I always get hung up on the fact that advances in engineering mean eventually it'll be easy to design cars that race fast enough to kill human drivers, and rules will always exist to limit the machines in arbitrary ways and promote someone else's idea of 'exciting racing.'

*But seriously, everyone needs to try out indoor carting. Few things has inspired more youTube rabbit holes for me, at some point I may travel to Europe to check out some of the tracks.
posted by midmarch snowman at 3:48 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

So the 60% energy thing is marketing bollocks, then? I know about motors and generators: I'm an engineer, worked in the power industry. I drive a hybrid (which has regenerative braking) and ride an e-bike (which does not: it's a mid-drive, not a hub motor).

The car must start the race with enough energy in the battery to finish. Regenerative braking isn't 100% efficient: some of the traction from the tires is lost through heat: in the motor (turned generator) coils , the charging circuit and the battery itself. The only energy available to the regenerative braking system is from the motion of the car. And that kinetic energy comes from the potential energy stored in the battery. If the cars do go further than the total energy stored in the battery, they've invented an above-unity perpetual motion machine.

(An electric vehicle race I'd pay to see: cars start with 0% charge at the top of Pike's Peak. They charge as they descend, then they race laps somewhere nearby using the energy they recovered from regenerative braking.)
posted by scruss at 4:55 PM on July 10 [4 favorites]

You can tell it is about F1 or the Tour De France because the word "penultimate" is used.
posted by pthomas745 at 5:03 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

scruss: I think it comes down to your definition of "adequate energy." I think the batteries probably have enough energy to complete a race in the very beginning... if you ignore energy lost in converting chemical to kinetic, lost to heat, lost to braking, lost to tire deformation and lost to aerodynamic drag. The 60% bit probably comes from the initial Formula E racers having to switch cars halfway through the race despite having similar sized batteries. Energy recovery from braking has just become a lot more efficient.
posted by midmarch snowman at 5:06 PM on July 10

So the 60% energy thing is marketing bollocks, then?

I mean...sort of? Of course the car, taken as a whole system, starts the race with enough energy in the battery to finish (although if you consider drafting or tailwinds this might not necessarily be the case) but is it really just marketing to use a number to express how demanding it is on the driver and the car design to optimize for regen? It would be a very different challenge if the car started with enough energy to go 95% of the distance with zero regen. How would you prefer they express the technical concept to a general audience?
posted by allegedly at 5:09 PM on July 10

Anything that didn't imply above-unity efficiency would do me.
posted by scruss at 5:14 PM on July 10 [3 favorites]

It might make sense.

A race car going flat out top speed and not regenerating because it doesn’t brake might go say 40km. Lots of unrecoverable aerodynamic losses. It might go 60km if it has to slow down for turns because less aerodynamic loss, but still throws away kinetic energy as heat from braking for those turns. A regeneration braking system might allow the car to go 100km.

The battery only has the “charge” to go 60% of the distance if braking energy is thrown away.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:29 PM on July 10

I tell you what, I'll start paying attention to Formula E when they start racing real distances at real race tracks, not temporary street courses.
posted by Relay at 6:32 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

Normal EVs factor this into their stated efficiency numbers, so if you're expecting 200 Wh/km that is already assuming regenerative braking. Consumer vehicles would never be described as "400km range, well actually it only starts with 72% of the energy to go 400km but..."

So this is a sort of derail, but does that mean electric cars get worse efficiency on the highway than on city streets? Like if you were on a highway with no traffic you wouldn't have to brake, which means that you aren't regenerating any power? Or is this what scruss is getting at, that the regeneration inherently is an inefficiency, and so the use of brakes can never actually recover power? I don't know if I am phrasing that correctly.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:13 PM on July 10

electric cars get worse efficiency on the highway than on city streets?

Yes. The 2022 Fuel Consumption Guide (Canada) has the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range using 17.8kwh per 100km in City driving, versus 19.5kwh per 100km in Highway driving.

While a Toyota Corolla with a standard petrol engine uses 7.9L per 100km in City driving versus 6.2L per 100km in Highway driving, so the opposite.

The reason for this is that you have two main sources of losses

- air resistance, which increases proportionally to the square of speed (which means going at 100kmph instead of 80kmph will cause 56% more drag losses.

- braking losses which are more frequent in city driving

(plus some other internal friction / heat / efficiency forces that we'll ignore)

If you cancel out most of the braking losses due to regenerative braking, then the main loss you're facing is air resistance, so going slower is better.
posted by xdvesper at 7:44 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

If you're on a highway going at a constant speed you don't have to brake but you also don't have to accelerate, so you're only paying friction and drag losses mostly based on your speed. City streets with no regen is a lot worse under reasonable assumptions because you repeatedly pay the energy cost to accelerate and then throw that energy away in braking. To tie this back to Formula E, there are a lot of corners on a race course so the efficiency is much lower than it would be on one long straight. All regenerative braking can do is reduce this inefficiency, it can never catch up.
posted by allegedly at 7:46 PM on July 10 [1 favorite]

The last time I looked at formula E, they had something called like a “social boost“, where getting likes or fans or followers or some shit would make the car go faster, and I feel like we have enough perverse incentives for athletes to have to be Self promoters and marketers Instead of athletes without having to build it in to the rules Of the sport.
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:07 PM on July 10 [2 favorites]

air resistance, which increases proportionally to the square of speed (which means going at 100kmph instead of 80kmph will cause 56% more drag losses
carthrottle:-) also compare drag coefficients, i.e. a veyron is less aerodynamic than a prius (also, tires don’t burn as quickly at top speed [6:20 “what the [expletive] is a cd?”; mefi:drift])

> Monaco is a temp circuit [fandom]
posted by HearHere at 9:32 PM on July 10

An electric vehicle race I'd pay to see: cars start with 0% charge at the top of Pike's Peak. They charge as they descend, then they race laps somewhere nearby using the energy they recovered from regenerative braking
Even better - instead of going somewhere else to race, they have to turn around and climb back up the mountain, with the winner being the car that gets furthest!

I'm pretty sure the 60% thing is largely marketing and the reality is they start with more than 60% of the energy required, but somewhere less than 100%. This requires a balancing of use of stored energy and how much can be regenerated, so they can't use full power right through the race, but have to manage when to use it. Sort of like my suggestion above - there's no way a car could generate energy going down a mountain, then climb all the way back up with just that energy. There are always losses in generation and in delivery of the energy. The cars start with less than all of the power needed to finish at race pace, but must regenerate some through the race and the more they can regenerate the more time they can use full power.
posted by dg at 9:59 PM on July 10 [2 favorites]

I scanned the FE scene a few months back and while it seems like it could be an interesting take on the physics of the sport, the tracks seemed SO SMALL.
posted by rhizome at 10:44 PM on July 10

I drove up Mt Washington last year, and it took about 40 miles of range to get up there from the parking lot at the bottom. Regen braking recovered about 22 miles on the way down, giving a total of 18 miles worth of energy used. The roundtrip length of the road is 16 miles, so regen came pretty close to flattening the mountain. Every other car I saw that day used all that extra energy on the way up, then threw it away overheating their brakes on the way down. Actually, they did even worse, since they also threw away 3/4 of the energy used to get up the mountain in the first place.

If anything, I think FE's 60% figure is understating it. F1 cars start a race with more than enough energy aboard to finish, but they still need a couple of pit-stops.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 6:17 AM on July 11

F1 pit for tires, not fuel.

It seems like FE has been on the cusp of being interesting for a decade now. They need to get away from the ridiculous tracks they race on.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:26 AM on July 11 [1 favorite]

F1 pit for tires, not fuel.

The rules on this have gone back and forth over the years, but as of I think 2010, F1 cars don't refuel during a race. AFAIK the strategy used to be "roll light and fast, refuel often" but there were too many serious accidents and near-accidents.

Having said that, if the reason F1 doesn't fuel during pitstop is that gasoline is flammable, this isn't relevant to electric vehicles so maybe something else can be tried.
posted by mhoye at 10:10 AM on July 11 [1 favorite]

At least as much as safety, cost was the reason F1 abandoned refuelling. Arguably safety was part of the reason for the cost, of course.

Formula E is interesting and fun, but it is definitely not trying to do the same thing as F1. The series is all about street tracks in places you couldn't take loud, smokey IC race cars, and the cars are made to match - just less than half the power of a F1 car. The race distances are roughly just over a third of an F1 race (and the duration typically about half). The cars are way more spec than F1, making it less of an engineering championship (though more so than a one make). And Fan Boost and Attack Mode are pretty gimmicky, making F1's DRS look downright sensible by comparison. Fe is on treaded all-weather tires, rather than F1's slicks.

Maybe over time there will be some convergence on what the series are about (Fe has become less spec and more powerful with time, F1 has played with being an efficiency formula in a similar way to early Fe) but at the minute, they're quite different, by design: Fe quite sensibly launched to play to the strengths of electric cars, do things you couldn't without them, be less expensive to compete in, rather than try to out-F1 F1.
posted by Dysk at 5:50 PM on July 11

There's an interesting explanation on how the available energy will be controlled in F1 from 2026 here. More reliance on power from electricity and less ICE power, but some really bizarre restrictions on how much can be regenerated and when the electric energy can be used. Big reductions in weight, downforce and drag might see some more passing opportunities because cars' grip won't be impacted as much when following closely. So, probably some big variations in the first few races, then rapidly moving to the usual procession as teams figure out the power management strategies that work best.
posted by dg at 5:41 PM on July 15

I did kind of enjoy the early part of the hybrid era, when F1 cars were very much fuel-limited and it became almost an efficiency formula. It feels a lot like that's been engineered out with reg changes and technology development (can't recall the last time I heard someone complain about lift and coast) so it'll be interesting to see a return to that.
posted by Dysk at 6:13 PM on July 15

So the 60% energy thing is marketing bollocks, then?

How would you prefer they express the technical concept to a general audience?

How about: “Regenerative braking has to recapture enough energy over the course of the race to recharge the battery by ⅔ of its full capacity.”
posted by mbrubeck at 6:15 PM on July 15

(Though recently, regulation changes have happened at the exact wrong moment quite regularly - just as things are converging and the teams close up on performance, we get a new set of rules and someone has a huge advantage again. 2026 doesn't look like it'll be any different.)
posted by Dysk at 6:15 PM on July 15

Very true. Unfortunately, it exacerbates the fact that, in any high-level motorsports category, the team with the most money wins the most races, if only because they can buy their way to a quicker understanding of the limits and loopholes of new rulesets.
posted by dg at 8:14 PM on July 15

The only silver lining there is that F1 has at least three to five teams spending the budget cap, so that fact doesn't make it entirely predictable.

You know, until the first couple races and you know who spent all that money most efficiently. But at least that could just as happily be a Merc as a McLaren or Red Bull.
posted by Dysk at 12:52 AM on July 16