ABB FIA Formula E Championship – completing the circuit

The global e-mobility revolution takes myriad forms: be it experimental electric aircraft, autonomous ferries, fast-charged bus fleets, or the increasingly familiar sight of web-connected EVs on public roads.

But if there’s a single branch of e-mobility development that would take the prize for high-profile, pioneering innovation, it would surely be the ABB FIA Formula E championship, which pits 22 of the world’s most talented drivers against each other in the most advanced electric racecars yet created, to fight for honors in a global motorsport championship.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of ABB Formula E is the noise – or, more accurately, the lack of it.

As the world’s first global all-electric motor racing category, the ABB FIA Formula E Championship, to use its full name, was born of an idea that would shatter one of the most dearly held conventions in motorsport: that racing should be ear-splittingly noisy, thanks to power derived from highly tuned internal combustion engines burning fossil fuels while spinning at up to 20,000rpm.

Since its inception in 2014, ABB Formula E has taken a radically different approach, instead adopting battery-powered cars driven by high-efficiency electric powertrains that use some of the world’s most advanced e-mobility technology. And in doing so, to the sound only of a high-pitched whine that accompanies the cars as they compete at city-centre racetracks around the planet, it has silenced the critics.

In less than five years, ABB Formula E has blossomed from an audacious start-up that was dismissed as a niche curio by both hardcore motorsport fans and the less visionary quarters of the automotive sector, into a sporting property of such relevance that major car manufacturers are now thrusting their way into the championship, frightened of missing the chance to flaunt their e-mobility credentials through competition success. Already the likes of Audi, BMW, Nissan and Jaguar field leading teams; next season they will be joined by blue-chip industry titans Porsche and Mercedes-Benz.

The championship, title-partnered by ABB since January 2018, is flourishing because of the inherent ‘rightness’ of its proposition at a time of growing concern over matters of sustainability, energy efficiency, pollution and urban congestion. In a single package that maintains a visceral sporting appeal at its core, ABB Formula E is able to showcase simultaneously: advanced electrification technology; urban transport solutions; the latest ideas in connected mobility; smart city visions and developments in sustainable power generation.

But the heart of the championship remains a field of fast, dramatic, electric racing cars driven by 22 of the world’s most talented drivers – many of whom have been drawn from Formula 1.
Each of the 11 two-car, two-driver, teams competes with their own variant of the same basic machine. It’s an open-cockpit single-seater built around an impact-resistant and highly protective carbon-fibre monocoque, which cocoons the driver. The suspension is hung from this central component and aerodynamic bodywork clothes the inner workings. This much is relatively conventional and typical of almost any contemporary single-seat racer.
But it is behind the driver that the defining hardware of an ABB Formula E racecar is hidden. Instead of a fuel tank, internal combustion engine and a multi-speed semi-automatic gearbox, the ‘Gen2’ racer introduced for this season packages a large, high-efficiency battery, one or two motors and a single-speed transmission. These are the elements that put the ‘E’ in to ‘ABB Formula E’.
The battery, built and supplied by McLaren Applied Technologies (MAT) – a sister company of the famous McLaren racing team – is common to every car and is absolutely central to their performance.

Weighing around 385 kg, it is both larger and heavier than the unit supplied for the earlier generation of cars that raced from seasons one to four and its peak output of 900 volts is an increase of 200 volts over the previous technology. It permits peak power of 250 kw – approximately 335 hp – and can push the cars to top speeds of around 280 km/h.

More significant than these headline figures, however, is that the battery’s increased capacity and efficiency allows ABB Formula E cars to complete a full race distance on a single charge. Over the first four seasons of racing, technological limitations meant that drivers would use two cars per race: starting in one until its battery emptied and stopping at half distance for a mid-race car-swap to an identical machine with a full battery.

While this unique procedure lent a distinct spectacle to ABB Formula E, it also drew attention to a specific consumer hesitancy that has hindered widespread EV adoption: range anxiety. The Gen2 car’s bigger battery pack has dismissed that concern, however, thanks to a 95 per cent energy increase for a 20 per cent weight gain. In this aspect more than any other, ABB Formula E has demonstrated the rapid pace of technical advancement across the e-mobility landscape.

MAT’s Gen2 battery pack was developed with particular regard for temperature management. Its internal lithium cells are highly sensitive to temperature: too cool and efficiency is not optimized; too hot and output life suffers. Homogenous cooling across the multiple individual cells inside the pack was therefore a key design goal.

Elsewhere beneath the aggressively styled bodywork of the Gen2 cars lie experimental technical developments being tested by manufacturers in a racing environment as part of their wider R&D programs. Twin-motor installations, whereby one of the pair is dedicated to one of the rear wheels (rather than drive from a single motor being split between two) have been evaluated for potential traction and drivetrain efficiency benefits, for example.

And all cars incorporate regenerative braking systems, to harvest significant amounts of energy under repeated intensive deceleration every lap. Until this season each car’s so-called ‘regen balance’ was controlled by the driver but electronic control introduced for Season 5 has enhanced the process. This is precisely the kind of sophisticated energy management technology that is invaluable to manufacturers in developing class-leading road car models.

ABB, meantime, has brought its own technical expertise to the Jaguar I-PACE eTROPHY series that supports ABB Formula E at 10 races this season.

The race-prepared version of the I-PACE, Jaguar’s all-electric SUV which recently won the prestigious Car of the Year award, is powered at circuits by custom-made variants of ABB’s Terra 53 DC charger.

To meet the series’ demands for a charger that could be both mobile at race tracks and easily transported between them, ABB commissioned a team of its engineers in India to reconfigure a standard Terra unit into a smaller package, with wheels, for easy freighting and manoeuvrability. By mid-season they had operated with a 100 per cent success rate.

Clearly, these are exciting times for ABB Formula E, with the championship in rude health and further ABB technical collaborations under discussion.

Nissan e.dams driver Sébastien Buemi, Season 2 champion and an ABB ambassador, needs no convincing as to the merits of all-electric motor-racing: “When we compete in ABB Formula E,” he says, “it feels like we are driving the future.”

FACTBOX

Gen2 vs Gen1