Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
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.
These FE cars are MUCH quieter than their F1 cousins.
From http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/2004-About-dB/
So it's really 2^6 = 64x as loud, perceptually.
http://www.marca.com/2014/01/30/motor/formula1/1391085772.ht... (Spanish)
I grew up near a F1 track during the "big bang" turbo era (1,350+HP from a 1.5 litre engine that would only last 3 alps in qualifying trim)[1]. I'm pretty sure we'll never hear engines like those in circuit races again, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One_engines#1966.E2.80....
But the important point is they are NOT silent. There's still a rush to hearing them zip by while in the stands.
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?
And yes, the engine sound is amazing! It sounds so much more futuristic than Formula 1.
edit: yeah, they do! Fascinating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIA_Formula_E_Championship#Car
If torque is the same at 5k revs vs 10k (to pick numbers from thin air), when you downgear 10k 2:1, you double the effective torque over 5k at 1:1, for the same output revs.
The battery layout and chemistry will limit the actual power that can be delivered to the powertrain (discharge rate). A faster electric car is not one geared higher, but one which converts the most of this energy into motion.
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?
Most of the limits on the cars are due to battery technology.
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!
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.
FWIW:
> The next regulation progression – scheduled for season three - will see manufacturers extend their efforts to the batteries, with the objective being the use of a single car per driver during races from the fifth season.
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.
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...
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).
What would Formula 1 look like today with no restrictions beyond basic driver safety?
Or in other words, it would no longer exists, because the public would lose interest in the lack of competition.
[1] http://www.landracing.com/index.php/2-news-and-articles/news...
Another cool thing is how close you are to the vehicles. You can be 20 feet away when the 2000hp streamliner takes off. (Although they aren't dragsters, so the acceleration isn't what's important). And most of the people love talking about what they built. So when they're waiting in line you can get right up to the cars and ask questions about stuff (just don't bother them if they look like they're in a hurry to fix/modify something ;) ). You'll see extremely well engineered vehicles using established ideas for going fast as well as crazy ideas that may or may not work (e.g. a v-twin converted into a single cylinder which uses the second cylinder as a supercharger.) Often times it's not even about trying to go faster, it's just about trying something new or challenging.
Anyone into cars and motorcycles should go at least once if they can. For many people, after their first experience they decide they need to bring something to run next year, and that's when the addiction starts. :)
I would like to see there be no rules on the cars except that they must weigh in under a certain number.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B
Maybe self driving or drive by wire cars would lead to a revival, it really was racing unleashed.
Risk and dedication in the face of physical injury is a very substantial component of professional sports. Essentially every boxer and many/most football & hockey players enjoy the benefits of repeated traumatic brain injury. Olympians sacrifice large chunks of their lives to developing the physique and reflexes necessary to win - quitting doesn't get the first quarter of their lifespan spent rigorously training back. Some of our most celebrated sports are devoted to violent confrontational combat, like MMA, with every injury possibility that entails, and we have turned the simulation/infliction of injuries into a billion-dollar soap opera in WWE (go watch 'The Wrestler'). Nobody wants to go back to gladiatorial bloodsports where ten men enter and one survives per round, but we are more than willing to sacrifice a lot of the lives of the participants for the sake of the sport, no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise. It is monetarily impossible to go through so much driver flesh when the races cost millions of dollars to enter.
The direct veneration of bodily sacrifice to the act of winning is something that draws audiences by the billions, even if it's not to my taste generally - but a sport which shows me what I want to see (the human mind at its best rather than the human body at its best) at the expense of modest risk factors isn't such a turnoff.
Opening up the regulations would make it prohibitively expensive. As it is, there are very few teams able to compete in the few remaining manufacturer series like WEC and F1.
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.
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.
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.
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/
We need robots than.
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.
http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2015/february/eight-manuf...
Instead of the company with the most money, the driver skill is more important this round.
They look the same in the way a Lenovo and an Apple look the same.
There are rules on track and wheelbase, crash structure and aero wing size that tend to dictate the overall silhouette, but from there, everything else is very different.
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.
Whether the drivers are trained to take advantage of this is another story.
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.).
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...
With driverless cars, I agree.
Also, WEC imposes lots of other limits (numbers of tires allowed, etc, etc.)
Imagine something more along the lines of Group C.
Otherwise it becomes who has the better funding to afford the best engineering team and money for the lightest and strongest parts.
"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."
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.
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.