Formula 1 Could Be All-Electric By 2035, Says Fomula E Boss

The launch of the Gen3 Formula E car at the Monaco E-Prix last weekend is another big step forward in performance and technology for the electric racing series. But it also signals how Formula E is inexorably closing in on Formula 1. According to Formula E Envision Racing Managing Director Sylvain Filippi, by 2035 Formula 1 could have a major decision to make: should it go all-electric, or become a specialized niche, akin to historic racing?

The Formula E race car has undergone a much more radical development than Formula 1 since the electric race series’ inception in 2014. Up until 2018, every team needed two cars per driver to complete all the laps, because one car could not manage the distance on its own. “The objective of the first generation of was to demonstrate that electric racing was viable,” says Filippi, who has worked with Formula E since the beginning. “At the time a lot of people rightfully said, what are you doing? If anything, you’re highlighting the problem with electric cars.”

But the Gen2 car solved this problem, alongside improvements to power, speed, and regeneration (where the electric motor runs in reverse to put energy back into the battery, like it does in the KERS system of a Formula 1 car and road-based hybrids). “The big step from Gen1 to Gen2 was to go from one car to two,” says Filippi. “We had pretty much doubled the amount of energy stored in the battery. The car was faster and had much longer range because now we could do the whole race with one car.”

The Gen3 Formula E car, due to be introduced for the 2023 season, takes the regeneration to a new level. While the Gen2 could regenerate up to 250kW, the Gen3 increases this dramatically to 600kW. This is because the car now has an additional 250kW motor on the front that is entirely used for regeneration. The power of the rear 250kW (335hp) motor has been increased to 350kW (469hp). Putting this in perspective, a typical consumer-grade road EV will offer around 60kW of regeneration – one tenth of the Formula E Gen3 car. For this reason, Formula E is no longer putting friction brakes on the rear of the car, just the front. The regeneration supplies enough braking force on its own.

It’s worth bearing in mind that Formula E cars already complete an entire 45-minute race using just a 52kWh battery, similar in size to the one found in a Renault Zoe, and smaller than a Tesla Model 3 Standard Range. The races are 49-55 miles in length, so efficiency isn’t great compared to driving your EV about town, but the Formula E car is travelling at up to 174mph. The Gen3 car raises the top speed to 200mph, while still maintaining the range capability, because it doesn’t just increase the power, it shaves 60kg off the weight as well – 760kg versus 820kg for Gen2. So it will be faster and more agile, making it even more suited for the street circuits used by the Formula E series. “The car will be very fast, very exciting to drive,” says Filippi.

Filippi sees the strong regeneration as a major technology development that can filter down to consumer-grade cars. With the Gen3 car, Formula E aims to make 40% of its energy usage during the race come from regeneration, which is an incredible result considering how much more efficient electric vehicles already are than fossil fuel-powered ones. “That’s a glimpse of where the future of electric cars is heading,” he says. “They will still have brakes for a little bit of time. But maybe at some point we’ll start to remove some brakes from consumer cars as well, once legislators have confidence that it’s working.” We are already seeing something like this with Volkswagen’s use of drum brakes on the rear of its all-electric cars, which are designed to never need pad changes for the lifetime of the vehicle.

Apart from the range from a single “refueling” stop, consumer EVs are already surpassing fossil-fuel powered ones for performance. Formula E isn’t quite there yet for racing, however. The 200mph top speed is still a little way off the fastest race speed of a Formula 1 car of 231.4mph, set by Valteri Bottas at the 2016 Mexican Grand Prix. But it’s getting closer, and leads to the question – when will Formula E cars start to make Formula 1 cars look slow, as their road equivalents already do for consumer-grade fossil fuel cars?

Filippi sees this happening in the next 10-15 years, by which time Formula E will probably have moved to Gen4 and Gen5, although neither has even entered the planning stage yet. So Formula 1 has a few more years left. “Synthetic fuels will take them to 2030,” says Filippi. “But for us that is a long way in the future. By then it will be on the borderline for Formula E’s performance matching Formula 1. But by 2035 you can start to envisage an electric car that will be easily as fast as a Formula 1 car. Then it’s about lap times.”

“We are also interested in the possibilities from extremely fast charging,” says Filippi. You may think the current 350kW pinnacle of public DC charging is rapid. Formula E is hoping to test out 600kW charging, to show it can be reliable. That would be able to charge the existing 52kWh battery from empty to full in barely 5 minutes, which would start to make longer Formula E sessions than 45 minutes viable, even Le Mans-style 24-hour long-distance races.

But battery technology could have developed sufficiently by 2030 to make recharging unnecessary anyway. Lithium sulfur technology that is currently under development could triple battery density, either making a vehicle with the Gen3 car’s current weight capable of a race distance to match Formula 1, or making the Formula E car even lighter, faster, and more agile. The 600kW of motors in the Gen3 car is also relatively pedestrian when you consider that a Rimac Nevera has more than twice the power. It’s technically possible to make an electric race car that will lap faster than a Formula 1 car today; it just wouldn’t do very many laps before the battery depleted.

For the time being, Filippi sees Formula E and 1 coexisting. Although there are obvious similarities, the circuit types, race length and formats are sufficiently differentiated for them to continue in parallel. “There will always be niche segments,” says Filippi. “Formula 1 will have many options for its future. It could become 80% electric and 20% hybrid. Or it could go in another direction entirely, showcasing the very best of what the V12 could be. And that will still create a fantastic sport and entertainment.”