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Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

arstechnica.com

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Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#31

Post by jkot »

bitL wrote: post #26
jmartinpetersen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems your data on F-1 are slightly out of date.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).

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 introd…

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

We need robots than.

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#32

Post by f055 »

gsnedders wrote: post #24
daphreak wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 innovatio…

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.

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...

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#33

Post by CHY872 »

exDM69 wrote: post #30

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…

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.

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#34

Post by ordinary »

Swizec wrote: post #25
adwn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a video without an annoying commentator, so that you can actually hear the engine: https://youtu.be/IptBVdys-mo?t=1m2s And yes, the engine sound is amazing! It sounds so much more futuristic than Formula 1.

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 lim…

Not a coincidence. Nephew of and son of, respectively.

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#35

Post by bitL »

jkot wrote: post #31
bitL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 introd…

> engines can't be pushed to higher hp unless we want to allow multiple casualties per race, We need robots than.

More like sophisticated human augmentations...

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#36

Post by mutagen »

Swizec wrote: post #25
adwn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a video without an annoying commentator, so that you can actually hear the engine: https://youtu.be/IptBVdys-mo?t=1m2s And yes, the engine sound is amazing! It sounds so much more futuristic than Formula 1.

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 lim…

Bruno Senna is Ayrton's nephew. Nicolas Prost is Alain Prost's son (and Alain is visible in some of the shots cheering on his son from the garage). There are a number of other close ties to F1 in both the car hardware and technology and many of the drivers.

Most of the limits on the cars are due to battery technology.

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#37

Post by brownbat »

Old_Thrashbarg wrote: post #23
mapt wrote: post #6

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 l…

Definitely, this is a huge opportunity for innovation if they would open it up. I would like to see there be no rules on the cars except that they must weigh in under a certain number.

We did something like this for a while. We quickly learned that we are more than capable of building machines that reliably kill their drivers:

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.

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#38

Post by CHY872 »

Swizec wrote: post #25
adwn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a video without an annoying commentator, so that you can actually hear the engine: https://youtu.be/IptBVdys-mo?t=1m2s And yes, the engine sound is amazing! It sounds so much more futuristic than Formula 1.

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 lim…

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!

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#39

Post by hengheng »

mapt wrote: post #6

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 l…

Vln does this to a certain degree. They have diesel cars competing with petrol driven ones, they had the crazy delta setup with a narrow front, and now the brilliant front-wheel drive front engine setup with electrical assist on the rear.

Re: Racing goes electric: At the track with Formula E, the first e-racing series

#40

Post by Swizec »

CHY872 wrote: post #38
Swizec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lim…

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 l…

> 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.

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