Slashdot Mirror
At the Track With Formula E, the First e-Racing Series
An anonymous reader writes Ars is running a story about the new all-electric racing car series and its first visit to the U.S.. "The pit lane we're standing in is unusual, and not only because it's a temporary setup placed in the shadow of American Airlines Arena (home of the NBA's Miami Heat). Garages are set up on both sides rather than being limited to one. A few things also appear to be missing. To start, a familiar smell from the usual mix of burning hydrocarbons is absent. And it's remarkably quiet. The occasional impact wrench bursts out in a mechanical staccato, generators drone here and there, but there are no V8s burbling, no V6s screaming....Welcome to Formula E, the world's first fully electric racing series. Miami is playing host to the first of two US rounds—the next being held in Long Beach, CA, on April 4—and it's the fifth race in this ePrix's inaugural season. Given we've got a bit of a thing about racing at Cars Technica, as well as an obvious interest in electric vehicles, we had to be on the ground in Miami to experience this for ourselves."
Also it's way more interesting technology-development-wise than old and busted formula ones..
How do you figure Formula 1 is old and busted? The current engine formula for F1 is V6 turbo hybrids which use 100kg of fuel for a race distance (typically ~305km, except for Monaco) versus the previous V8 engine formula which used 150kg. It's a significant step forward in fuel efficiency.
I'm afraid this won't save much nature at all, after all it's just the same wasting-a-lot-of-resources-just-for-the-fun-of-some-rich-people.
And no I am not a greenpeace activist, I watch formula-e events and some formula one events. Formula-e is much more fun, as a race actually takes place, and you can hear the tires working.
The cars are stock for the first season for cost reasons, for the second season there are several chassis builders and several power unit suppliers signed up, so there will be a better spread of performance amongst the pack.
Is that so odd? Many many sporting activities have facilities designed especially for them.
Formula 1 is the high point of automotive racing technology.
Not really. You can very easily build a better car than a Formula 1 car. F1 is the high point of automotive racing technology under the regulations imposed on the cars. F1 regulations ban a lot of car design for reasons of cost control, safety, promotion of good racing and emphasis on driver skill.
to put 8 kW/kg into perspective, all commercial brushless dc motors are at 4 kW/kg and it is a limitation of the materials used.
Commercial internal combustion engines range from 1 kW/kg to *maybe* 3 kW/kg if it is turbocharged to the point of sacrificing engine longevity and formula 1 engines are at around 5 kW/kg
although i suspect they saved weight by using the vehicle frame as (part of?) the stator, a perk of making a motor for a very specific purpose.
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Formula 1 jumped the shark when they disallowed ground effects. When THE most significant car ever produced for F1 (the Lotus 79) is illegal, you've made it more about money instead of innovation, which has defined F1 from the 80s on. How does it feel to be running 30 year old technology, grandpa?
Everyone knows electric cars are the future (which F1 even begrudgingly admits by requiring hybrids), and instead of meeting that future head on like Formula E, F1 totters along, and will contribute nothing to the future of racing.
That, sir, is old and busted.
The whole point of electric motors is max torque from zero rpm so what the hell does it need a 5 speed for? Ok, its rpm isn't unlimited so eventually you'll have to changed the ratio to get a good top speed , but 2 ratios should be enough for this. Whats going on?
I'm hoping large corporations get interested. Right now, I understand all cars are basically made by Renault. It would be nice if other companies jump onto this train too, with a serious interest to showcase their knowledge about batteries and electric cars. (Or just an interest to burn some marketing dollars).
It's a great idea to start off with the same car, but am happy that the teams can design their own cars in the next seasons. In all fairness, the cars still need a lot of improvement: the speed of the cars is too low.
> Formula 1 jumped the shark when they disallowed ground effects.
Ground effects whilst technologically interesting suffer from safety problems.
As soon as a car deviates from the optimum ride height for the undertray effects to work the downforce varies significantly. This is a problem when apex speeds are significantly higher due to the extra downforce created by ground effects.
Hit a bump the wrong way and lose downforce == shoot off the corner at much higher speeds into the barrier.
All the Formula E cars are charged using a single generator that uses glycerol as fuel.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Ground effects cars were crazy though. I kinda think it is a good thing that the best driver in F1 doesn't simply correspond to who is the most suicidal. And something like the Williams FW15C was going to render the skill of the driver almost redundant if that seam of development had been allowed to continue.
On the other hand those cars and others (like bernie's fan car, and even the blow diffuser and f-duct) are part of the interesting narrative that is F1 and I do think the FIA has become so concerned with preventing another Lotus 79 or Williams FW15C that they are pre-emptively killing any chance for real technical innovation.
But they're just a bunch of businessmen now. Once Bernie goes I think it will sadly fall apart. The management, rights holders and teams will end up spending more time in court than out on the track. As much as I think Bernie is a dick, like an dodgy book keeper, I also think he maintains a careful balance of handouts and ego massaging that allows the various interests involved to generally get some cars out on track every weekend.
The battery is fully integrated into the vehicle and is part of the structure. It can't be easily removed. Not for lack of want, though. Swappable batteries are under development, but it will likely mean compromises in the chassis construction.
I'm more annoyed that there is a *minimum* pit time, meaning drivers have to wait and get penalized if they leave the pits too early.
=Smidge=
For me, the lack of any "raw" engine noise is actually the only minus.
The high-pitches wheezing just doesn't sound enjoyable at all; it's bland and unrecognizable at this point.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
They are working on it. This reminded me of having to explain the tactical use of pit stops in F1 to a partner a while back. "You mean they can't finish without swapping wheels? Not interested"
I'm afraid this won't save much nature at all
In the gasoline era, a lot of engine innovation occurred because of racing. The same may occur in electric cars.
wasting-a-lot-of-resources-just-for-the-fun-of-some-rich-people.
Have you ever been to an auto race? I would not describe the typical crowd as "rich people". And what is wrong with having fun? Isn't that what life is all about?
For me, the lack of any "raw" engine noise is actually the only minus.
Why? Seriously, why? What does that have to do with the outcome of the race? More noise != faster car. More noise != better engineering. More noise != better driving. Loud engines are a second order effect from trying to get horsepower from internal combustion engines but it isn't important to making a faster car. The noise serves no useful purpose at all and I simply do not comprehend the entertainment value in going deaf from needlessly loud engines.
The high-pitches wheezing just doesn't sound enjoyable at all; it's bland and unrecognizable at this point.
So basically you are telling me that you don't give a rip about the actual auto racing or the engineering involved. You just want a bunch of guys revving their engines loudly with no actual purpose which they could do in a parking lot. [sarcasm] Boy that sounds really exciting... [/sarcasm]
I am not quite sure what you're talking about. The tracks and their skylines are beautiful, and there is always some close, often wheel to wheel, racing for the lead right until the end. The drivers are very accomplished open wheel racers. You can't compare them to the F1 top five or so, but overall they're just as good or better than a median F1 racers. In fact, many of them had a considerable amount of F1 seat time, either as a race or test driver.
And I am sorry, and I personally don't know the product is crap because of blah blah blah. Sounds like you have created a strawman argument to defend your elitist viewpoint here.
The cars are stock for the first season for cost reasons, for the second season there are several chassis builders and several power unit suppliers signed up, so there will be a better spread of performance amongst the pack.
Therein lies the great racing divide: vehicles that are essentially identical and thus, in theory, the driver is the difference versus real manufacturer's vehicles so the driver / car combination becomes more important. NASCAR, for example, uses the former model and thus a good driver combined with effective cheating is the route to success. Endurance racing tends to the latter along with having various classes so cars of equal capability race against each other.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Have you ever been to an auto race? I would not describe the typical crowd as "rich people".
Then you have clearly not been to a Formula One race. With NASCAR you are quite correct.
But that is just the spectators. If you want to actually race at anything more than your local junker car level, auto racing is hugely expensive. There is an old joke that the best way to make a small fortune in auto racing is to start with a large one.
But do you drive at +240 kph, make rapid acceleration to get you to 96 kph in two seconds, all while trying to stay ahead of the guy who's trying to pass you?
Yeah, thought not.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
When THE most significant car ever produced for F1 (the Lotus 79) is illegal, you've made it more about money instead of innovation, which has defined F1 from the 80s on.
Hrm, let's review the Lotus 79's qualifying performances at some tracks versus the 2014 formula. There only seem to be two tracks where we can meaningfully compare lap times. A lot of the 1978 F1 circuits aren't used in F1 anymore and some circuits (like Canada) have had the lap shortened. But we can compare Monza and Monaco. So let's see:
1. In 1978 at Monaco the best qualifying Lotus was 1:29.100. In 2014 the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg was on pole with 1:15.989.
2. In 1978 at Monza the best qualifying Lotus got pole with a lap of 1:37.520. In 2014 Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes was on pole with a lap time of 1:24.109.
I don't get it. Why are the qualifying lap times worse in 1978 if the Lotus 79 is the most significant car ever produced for F1? The 2014 cars were a bit slower than the 2013 V8s, which was due to a loss of downforce due to changes in aero regulations and the introduction of the new engine formula, but the 2014 cars were light years ahead of the Lotus 79.
Which is why I think that car races will eventually be much more interesting when we have computers driving them. No more worrying about injuries or deaths, or how many g-forces you can pull before someone gets hurt. No holds barred robot racing. Although I think it would eventually (d)evolve into something like pod-racing with something dragging along the ground just so you can pretend you aren't flying. I think there has to be some rules. but as long as you disallow jet engines or require the cars to be propelled through the wheels, you could have a pretty interesting race. Maybe we could just move to remote control in the meantime until computers are smart enough to control cars in a race situation.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Yeah F1 isn't nearly as advanced as all those other racing series that don't have any regulations on the cars. For those interested I've compiled a list of regulation free racing series:
(end of list)
Then perhaps they're not really a fan of racing as such, but a fan of noise and foul odors.
For those people, there's always going to be monster truck rallies.
=Smidge=
I've actually been watching the Formula E races, because I'm into Formula 1 and there are a bunch of B-list ex-F1 drivers in there.
As far as I can tell, there's a fairly strong emphasis on it being entertainment rather than sport. For example, drivers get a boost button they can use during the race if they're the "fan favourite" before the race. There are also some gimmicks like bonus points for fastest lap and pole position. In the pre-season trailers, one of the key talking points was the DJ that was going to be guesting for each race.
The races themselves are fairly laughable - short, with a fairly hilarious car swap when they run out of juice (the driver hops out of one car and does a little dash to the other car), and the cars themselves are fugly as hell and all the bits are wobbly (so... a bit like me I guess). The coverage is completely ghetto, minimum-budget stuff -- it's on ITV4 in the UK, which tells you everything you need to know.
However, it's a a new series, and the drivers at least are for real, so I'm giving it time to grow.
So you truly have no comprehension of what makes sports popular do you? It's PRECISELY the fact that people think of these teams as "their team".
I like motorsports because I like motorsports, I don't care about any particular team. It's thrilling just to see it. That's what's great about stuff like world rally.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And when the Williams FW15C basically created a new sub-category within F1 and then was banned the following season, everyone immediately knew that F1 racing was no longer about advancing technology to make better street cars, but it was all about lining Bernie's pockets.
Seriously, count the tech items in that car that eventually made it to street cars.
All sporting contests have arbitrary limits. Why ten pins in bowling instead of 9? Why is an American football field 100 yards long instead of 120? Soccer field sizes can vary, but within limits. In general, the rules make the sport. And rules change over time. Both football and baseball have updated rules to make the games more appealing to audiences and improve safety. F-1 and NASCAR have equipment limitations which change to keep up with technology. In this case, the rule you decry is only to add spectator involvement, something that is now possible with today's technology and seen as highly desirable by the folks fronting the money to promote this sport. Stop complaining about what makes a sport a sport, as opposed to a bunch of people getting together to do something random.
That is all.
Yup, there has been absolutely no advancement in tires since 1979.
Also- 79 Lotus 480hp
2014 Mercedes 750hp
So yes, a turboed Mercedes with current tires and over 30% more horsepower can run a whole 15 seconds faster than a NA Lotus on bias ply tires.
Any other mysteries of the universe I can illuminate for you?
Am I the only one who thinks this is the right thing done the wrong way? All cars the same? Swap cars at pit-stop time? There is an opportunity here for competition through racing to push the envelope on what is possible in electric cars; why is it effectively being wasted? It was racing that helped perfect the gasoline car; heck Lois Chevrolet was a racer and Henry Ford did his fair share of racing.
Looking at the SRT_01E stats I think a stock Tesla P85D *family sedan* would actually have a chance against it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-Renault_SRT_01E
If recharge time were part of the race a P85D would likely murder a SRT_01E with a battery swap.
This is the type of innovation that should be encouraged in races; not discouraged by using only one make and model of vehicle and creating silly rules to make up for its inadequacy!