Formula E

[CrisisWolf]

Has anyone else been following the development of this new race series? I went upto Donington for the test day on Friday and the sound is the oddest thing. For those that know, Donington is on a flight path and has constant aircraft activity overhead, problem is the Formula E cars sound pretty much the same but quieter. They were even discussing playing music whilst the racing is on (a Formula E soundtrack - pre order today!)

 

I think it will be set apart from other motorsport as all of the events will take place in city centers which will be a spectacle in itself.

 

Anyway I took some photos and put them online for your perusal - http://www.crisiswolf.com/Cars/Motorsport/Formula-E-Testing-Donington-2014/

 

Plug over - let the discussion commence! 

[M444TTB]

Looking forward to watching it on ITV4. I don't think it will be a long term series but hopefully proves interesting for a while.

[CrisisWolf]

Is that what its being broadcast on? I hadn't looked that far ahead. Might have to go and watch one, just for the unique backdrop of a city.

 

Round 10 - 27 June 2015 LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM. Proposed WSCC Meet?

[M444TTB]

Yep saw an advert for it as 'coming soon' the other day.

[peet]

I think this is a better direction for F1 to go in personally as F1 should be about the newest technology pushing to future the epitome of design which in current society also includes not harming the enviroment. We know the teams have the brains and technology!

Far better future than the current rule changing goalpost moving backward stepping dumbing down that currently passes as F1...

But that is just my idealist opinion - if someone offered me a ride in an F1 car i'd jump at the chance!! Hehe

[corsechris]

Electric cars are still a pointless diversion until there is properly clean electricity and some sort of viable energy storage technology. Neither exist at present and the current offerings are just excuses to make people feel good. Don't forget the Prius coming 75/100 in the dust to dust survey. Hardly green.

[M444TTB]

Hmm I think they potentially have a place in big cities as a local air quality measure but otherwise totally agree on the end-to-end environmental impact. They are very interesting and different to drive though. IF I had the money I'd now add a BMW i3 to my fleet of cars. Of course it would

Be alongside some dirty multi-cylinder M-Power goodness.

As for F1, in its latest incarnation it's incredibly high tech. Hybrid technology, rightly or wrongly, will almost certainly be where mass production goes next after down sizing and turbocharging are the norm.

[Mark (smokey mow)]

I've been following the progress of Formula E almost since it's inception and had been fortunate to talk with Paul Drayson on the subject following the demise of the Ev Cup and his announcement of intent to enter an F.E team.

Setting aside the arguments about the current environmental credentials of electric vehicles the big drivers for electric Motorsport are noise and exhaust emissions, these two factors allow the cars to be raced at times and locations which would prohibit the use if their counterparts with internal combustion engines. Many of us I'm sure can familiarise with the struggle of getting our cars through noise testing at certain circuits.

Give it enough time and EV technology will improve together with battery efficiency and packaging. Drayson has successfully marketed the use of a wireless charging system that charges the batteries as the cars pass over an induction pad buried in the road. This was first shown on their B12/69EV world record car which also used structural batteries that also formed the composite chassis.

It's taken over 100 years for the combustion engine to develop to where it is now and only in recent years have manufacturers done anything about improving its efficiency and emissions. The technology surrounding electric vehicles is still in it's infancy but has come a long way in a very short space of time. IMO we need things such as Formula E and the Nissan Zeod at LeMans to help drive forward development and showcase the potential of an all electric drivetrain, eventually maybe this will lay to rest some of the myths and prejudice EV currently experiences.

I for one will be in London on 27th June 2015 for the UK round, if just to say that I was there when when it all began

[M444TTB]

Do you know how to get London tickets Mark? Perhaps not on sale yet. Great that the 10 races start from September so there's a little winter motorsport action!

[Mark (smokey mow)]

Do you know how to get London tickets Mark? Perhaps not on sale yet. Great that the 10 races start from September so there's a little winter motorsport action!

i haven't seen anything about UK ticket sales yet, so i'm guessing that with still a year to go they're not on sale just yet.

[corsechris]

Electric drive chain, superb, no argument there. I return to my point though, where does the power come from? For me, the current crop are in some ways worse than not doing anything as they convince the hard of thinking that they are in some way solving the fundamental problem we have of using up all our fossil fuels and polluting the environment. They simply do not.

An efficient hybrid is about the best we can hope for at the moment I suppose, or perhaps, how about we stop driving around in ever heavier and toy-laden cars. All most of us actually need for transport would be a 125cc bike doing 70mpg on a bad day. No?, thought not, I know I wouldn't.

Still, it's a fine distraction while Rome burns anyway.

[Mark (smokey mow)]

I totally agree that electricity generation needs to be looked at which is why I deliberately set it aside in my previous post.

As battery and motor technology improve and together with it efficiency the demands on grid produced electricity will be lessened although there will still be a demand. As we know that electricity has to be produced somehow and in the UK at least the greater proportion of it is still generated by non-renewable sources.

We're getting there slowly though and in the first quarter of this year 19.4% of our electricity was generated by reneawables (wind/solar/wave/tidal/bio) this was up from 12.4% in the same quarter for the previous year.

[corsechris]

Sort of drifitng a bit now...but this is S&N after all...

 

Anyhoo, this is a great site for power grid anoraks. http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php  Some of the comments on the smaller feeders may give a clue as to why/how renewables contributed 19.4% in the first quarter.

 

Tidal sems to be something we should be making better use of but for whatever reason, there seems little appetite for it.

 

Longer term, fusion seems to hold the most promise but sadly, it's been 10 years away for at least the past 40 years.

 

To continue the theme of ingoring the fundamental problem though, I've a few questions about the actual race setup. How many laps? Can a current car complete the distance on one charge? I guess it's an age/inclination thing, but the notion of giving the most 'liked' driver a power boost in the race strikes me as utterly absurd but it's probably just some devious way of monitising the audience a bit more.

 

If it gets televised, I might watch it but I can't say it's getting me all lathered up in anticipation. The cynic in me thinks it's just a case of someone spotting a marketing/revenue stream opportunity.

[Dibby]

It was the same when the internal combustion engine came about, it was slow, sounded horrible, inefficient, only went a few miles and there was nowhere to fill up. A bunch of naysayers predicting it will never catch on, the horse will never be improved on - how can anyone improve on a squillion years of evolution? All new technology has to start somewhere.

 

IMO, petrol will go the way of the horse in 100 years time - weekend playthings for the rich. It's time for a change, we can't keep up this rate of fossil fuel use and expanding the population of the world, something has to give eventually.

[corsechris]

I absolutely agree....up to a point, but to be fair, electric cars aren't quite in the same place as IC was 100 years ago. At that time, technology was pretty much still in the steam era, nowadays, our use of electric motors, power generation/storage and control systems is pretty ubiquitous throughout our world and the application of this tech to cars is relatively recent. Not to say electric cars are new. They have been around as long as IC ones. I'd be delighted to see a properly practical solution to this. I thought the Honda Energy Station thing was a pretty good stab at it. Heat your house, provide your electricity and charge your car. Stll burns gas though.

 

I doubt petrol will last 100 years either frankly, but as it stands, we have nothing to replace it. My argument is simply that we need a proper source of clean power to charge them up first and foremost, and a proper energy storage method to make them truly useful for more than a small percentage of users. What worries me about the current state of the art is it convinces too many people that it's been solved, and it hasn't. As they are at present, they consume vast amounts of resources and energy for little if any overall benefit. Hydrogen fuel cell power looked promising....for a while. But that comes back to using dirty electricity as well. Until we can unplug that stinking great coal-fired power station from the charging socket on the car, it's all just tinkering around the edges of the problem. 

 

We need to be keeping hold of our oil for other uses than just burning it. We need to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. We could also do with easing back a bit on breeding as well. Sadly, I predict none of those things will happen.

 

I suspect we are all pretty much arguing the same point here, I'm just a tad more cynical about it!

 

It's largely academic to me though, I'll be dead before the petrol runs out and have no investment in the future. I feel for those of you who do though. I do my bit up to a point, I run re-cycled car parts in the Westfield, I run my thirsty fossil-fuel powered monster on LPG, a largely unwanted by-product of evil oil, I do less miles in a year than many people do in a month, I keep older cars on the road and have never bought a new one, thereby reducing the overall impact of them, I can't afford to go on holidays to far flung places any more. Ironically, an electric car would work for my commute, such as it is, but I couldn't bring myself to buy one as they are at present. Couldn't afford it either, but that's another matter.