Audi Went The Wrong Way By Switching To Formula 1 From Formula E

One year ago, almost to the day, Audi finished its final race in Formula E, after being one of the founding teams at its inception in 2014. As if to mark the anniversary, Audi recently announced it would be joining Formula 1 instead, starting 2026. Just as it is becoming increasingly clear that electrification is the future for most forms of personal transportation, Audi seems to be going the opposite way back to combustion. Is this a futile bid to fight the tide of history?

At face value, it does sound like a completely pointless move. Formula 1 will remain the flagship form of motor racing for some years, with hundreds of millions of fans around the world. But its value as a testbed for technologies destined to arrive in consumer cars has depleted and looks set to disappear in the next couple of years. However, there is one beacon of hope. The subtext of Audi’s arrival in Formula 1 is another announcement by the FIA motorsport for 2026: the arrival of “sustainable” synthetic fuel.

There is a lot at stake in the transition to EVs, and while the departure of Herbert Diess from Volkswagen Group is being blamed on his inability to solve the company’s software problems, there are other theories. One is that those with vested interests in the combustion engine business and its supply chains fought back and eventually won. After all, Audi won’t be the only company in the group experimenting with synthetic fuels. Porsche has also been exploring the possibilities for a few years, and look who has just taken over from Diess.

The dream for combustion lovers is that synthetic fuel can be a drop-in replacement for gasoline, meaning that apart from the fuel change, the rest of our existing infrastructure can remain the same. The same fuel stations, the same trucks delivering that fuel to the stations, the same engines in the cars, and the same skills being used to make those cars. Business as usual, and the profits going to the same people too.

It’s possible that for high-performance specialist car applications, synthetic fuel has a place. Right now, it’s hideously expensive, however. As I have argued in the past, using the power-to-liquid system that makes these “e-fuels” from electricity, they are so inefficient in energy use that they make hydrogen fuel cells look economical. In fact, e-fuel cars are around five times less efficient than battery-electric cars in kW consumption per mile, because combustion wastes so much of its energy, whatever the fuel type. As a result, synthetic fuels are likely to be very expensive, although if you’re trying to keep an “exotic” sportscar on the road, you might be willing to pay that.

These attempts to save combustion could also be too little, too late for motorsport, as electrification development moves on apace. One of the best examples comes from Formula 1’s sister electric FIA road race, Formula E, which will be introducing its new Gen3 car for the next competitive season. Although Formula E has been gradually improving every year, the Gen3 car looks like the one that will really put electric street racing on the map. The list of upgrades is huge, starting with a 200mph top speed, which isn’t far behind a Formula 1 car, and a major upgrade on the Gen2 car’s 174mph and Gen1’s 140mph. This is thanks to a 350kW (480hp) motor, where the Gen 2 had 250kW (335hp) and Gen 1 just 200kW (268hp).

The biggest upgrade is the amount of regeneration the Gen3 car provide – where the motors run in reverse to put energy back into the battery. The Formula E team has placed a 250kW motor on the front of the car purely for this purpose – it provides no motive power. Alongside the 350kW rear motor, this means the Gen3 car can regenerate at up 600kW. This provides so much braking power that the Gen3 doesn’t even have hydraulic brakes on the rear wheels, just the front ones. The amount of regeneration is so great that Formula E reckons around 40% of the energy used in each race will be from this source.

To go alongside this, Formula E will introduce recharging during the races, which will also operate at 600kW. This is way ahead of the fastest commercial public chargers, which currently max out at 350kW. The Formula E car battery pack is just 51kWh, which amazingly already lasts a full 45-minute race. In theory that would require a five-minute recharge, although battery charging curves are not linear. The batteries won’t be charging from empty, so a stop won’t be five minutes long. The cars will start the race on 60% capacity, however, so a recharge will be necessary. Nevertheless, a pitstop will be a lot longer than refueling used to take in Formula 1 (6 to 9 seconds), and even Le Mans pit stops are quicker. But given that Formula E can be a bit of a procession, recharging stops could make the racing more strategic and exciting.

Amazingly, despite the extra motor, the Gen3 car only weighs 840kg, less than before. In fact, the weight has been gradually decreasing, from 920kg for the Gen1 car to 900kg for the Gen2 (all including the driver). That makes a power-to-weight ratio of 571hp per ton for the Gen3 car, which is quite a bit behind a Formula 1 car, but the instant torque of an electric motor could well make the performance difference not as pronounced on the track as the figures imply. In other words, Formula E Gen3 cars will be pushing towards the performance of Formula 1. It would be very interesting to see the two race each other at some point.

As Audi has left Formula E, other automakers have arrived or stayed, who clearly see the race series both as a technology testbed (for example for regeneration and motor performance software algorithms) and as a branding exercise. These now include DS Automobiles, Mahindra, Maserati, NIO, Nissan, and Porsche (ironically). Jaguar has been on the list since 2016, and I recently met members of the Jaguar TCS team and its partner Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) at the London E-Prix, which included a garage tour.

Jaguar was quite early to join the consumer EV revolution with the excellent and award-winning I-Pace. Since joining Formula E, the company has seen it as a way to develop its electric technology, particularly the software, according to James Barclay, Jaguar TCS Team Principal and Managing Director of Jaguar Land Rover Motorsport. In fact, he sees it as a playing a key role in the company’s Reimagining Jaguar plan to remake the company as a pure-electric luxury brand from 2025 onwards. Partner TCS is a company providing sports performance software technology beyond motorsport, including tracking runners during the London Marathon. Now that software plays an increasingly central role in cars, the TCS connection makes a lot of sense too.

The contrast between Jaguar and Audi’s motorsport programs, and what that means for both brands’ futures, couldn’t be more pronounced. Synthetic fuel has a role to play somewhere – perhaps in aircraft. But the development effort Audi will be putting in for its Formula 1 program in 2026 looks like it will have value only in motorsport, whereas what companies like Jaguar learn from Formula E is likely to have much wider applications in the cars most people will be driving every day in the years to come.