Ars checks out the future of Formula E at Venturi

The more energy you can recover on track, the further you'll go.

Read the whole story

 

[hard_fork]

CarsTechnica month?

 

[NedSand]

No talk of making the batteries swapable? Also I think if they allowed teams to automate battery usage it would gain more real world data that would translate to the consumer market. Still cool stuff. I had to go back and re-read the last Ars article as I haven't heard of Formula E anywhere else.

Edit: Tried to watch the video on the second page of the article from last year. All I wanted to do was hear the cars but the announcer dude wouldn't shut up.

 

[Darkness1231]

Ah the FIA. An organization that is at the trailing edge of logic and beyond the borders of reason.

 

[Llampshade]

Darkness1231[/url]":31otc5h8]Ah the FIA. An organization that is at the trailing edge of logic and beyond the borders of reason.

Nonsense problems are the hallmark of car racing leagues. The problems of Indy/CART drove open wheel racing to huge lows in the US. Then there's NASCAR. It seems that everything I like about car racing is what the rule makers want to destroy. Maybe the problem is probably me.

 

[aggri1]

Couple of things someone could perhaps clarify for me...

The sentence "motor is still limited to 200kW but revs higher and makes more torque" appears to be self-contradictory. If it makes more torque at higher angular velocity then it makes more power. Does it make more torque at low speed, and less torque at the (newer) higher speeds, than the older 200kW motor?

Also, "we only have 170kW for the race", coming from Venturi's head of Formula E car development, is odd. Presumably he meant 170kWh, but alternatively, the battery is limited to 170kW... I don't know why kWh and kW is so often confused, one's clearly energy and the other power, which are very different concepts.

Regarding "Part of this management involves knowing how and when to change the amount of braking provided by the MGU versus the mechanical brakes at the rear": can they recover energy from the front wheels? I realise that the motor only drives the rear wheels, but are they precluded from putting a generator of some sort on the front wheels? Hopefully they move to all-wheel drive with maximum possible regen' at some stage.

Cheerio.

 

[SmokeTest]

aggri1[/url]":yp5uyabo]Couple of things someone could perhaps clarify for me...

The sentence "motor is still limited to 200kW but revs higher and makes more torque" appears to be self-contradictory. If it makes more torque at higher angular velocity then it makes more power. Does it make more torque at low speed, and less torque at the (newer) higher speeds, than the older 200kW motor?

Also, "we only have 170kW for the race", coming from Venturi's head of Formula E car development, is odd. Presumably he meant 170kWh, but alternatively, the battery is limited to 170kW... I don't know why kWh and kW is so often confused, one's clearly energy and the other power, which are very different concepts.

Don't get me started on the bafflingly wrong or inadequate terminology that gets used to describe batteries. Every time somebody tells me they have an X mAh (or worse, just mA) battery, I want to scream "At what voltage!?!?"

In this case, it probably is 170 kW, and not a typo. 170 kWh in a car would be considerably larger than your average EV, which on a stripped down race car, seems unlikely. More likely the battery pack can safety provide up to 170 kW of power, and they're drawing another 30 kW out of the regenerative braking supercapacitors for 200 kW total. An "average" supercapacitor can produce 1kA at 2.85V without exceeding nominal ratings, so it's easy to see how they could get an extra 30kW external to the batteries.

Regarding "Part of this management involves knowing how and when to change the amount of braking provided by the MGU versus the mechanical brakes at the rear": can they recover energy from the front wheels? I realise that the motor only drives the rear wheels, but are they precluded from putting a generator of some sort on the front wheels? Hopefully they move to all-wheel drive with maximum possible regen' at some stage.

I'm probably way off here, but I think it's probably a weight issue. You already have motors on the back wheels, so regenerative braking is easy. Just engage the motors without applying current, presto, regenerative braking (no, it's not really that simple, but you get the idea). If you don't have motors, you've got to add hardware.

My guess is the energy gained from adding regenerative braking on the front wheels is not as great as the energy lost from carrying around the hardware the whole time.

 

[alexbass311]

NedSand[/url]":2s4ugclt]No talk of making the batteries swapable? Also I think if they allowed teams to automate battery usage it would gain more real world data that would translate to the consumer market. Still cool stuff. I had to go back and re-read the last Ars article as I haven't heard of Formula E anywhere else.
.

I have heard that there are two primary reasons for non-swapable batteries. First has to do with safety, in that if the battery were easily swapable it would also be prone to being flung from the car in the event of high speed crashes. Obviously that would be bad for everyone given the weight/density of a battery. Second, making the batteries not swapable allows them/the support structure around them to be used for structural support members of the car in the same way the ICE is used in traditional F1 cars, which makes the cars stronger/more ridgid and safer.

 

[Dr Gitlin]

NedSand[/url]":2v4gl8xx]No talk of making the batteries swapable? Also I think if they allowed teams to automate battery usage it would gain more real world data that would translate to the consumer market. Still cool stuff. I had to go back and re-read the last Ars article as I haven't heard of Formula E anywhere else.

Edit: Tried to watch the video on the second page of the article from last year. All I wanted to do was hear the cars but the announcer dude wouldn't shut up.

No, because the batteries have a structural role too and it was realized early on that making them hot-swappable would add even more weight to an already overweight car.

aggri1[/url]":2v4gl8xx]Couple of things someone could perhaps clarify for me...

The sentence "motor is still limited to 200kW but revs higher and makes more torque" appears to be self-contradictory. If it makes more torque at higher angular velocity then it makes more power. Does it make more torque at low speed, and less torque at the (newer) higher speeds, than the older 200kW motor?

Good point, not sure. Those are the numbers that I've seen for both MGUs though. But as we'll see in a second, they may be capable of more than they're rated for.

Also, "we only have 170kW for the race", coming from Venturi's head of Formula E car development, is odd. Presumably he meant 170kWh, but alternatively, the battery is limited to 170kW... I don't know why kWh and kW is so often confused, one's clearly energy and the other power, which are very different concepts.

No, I know the difference. Although the motors are capable of 200kW, they're only allowed to be that powerful during qualifying. In the race they're running at a lower rating (think of it as analgous to turbocharged F1 cars from the 1980s which had different engine maps for qualifying and the race).

Regarding "Part of this management involves knowing how and when to change the amount of braking provided by the MGU versus the mechanical brakes at the rear": can they recover energy from the front wheels? I realise that the motor only drives the rear wheels, but are they precluded from putting a generator of some sort on the front wheels? Hopefully they move to all-wheel drive with maximum possible regen' at some stage.

Louis-Marie said the same thing; they'd much prefer to have a front MGU as well but for now the rules don't allow it.

 

[aggri1]

SmokeTest[/url]":jhqlcaqt]

aggri1[/url]":jhqlcaqt]Couple of things someone could perhaps clarify for me...
...
Also, "we only have 170kW for the race", coming from Venturi's head of Formula E car development, is odd. Presumably he meant 170kWh, but alternatively, the battery is limited to 170kW... I don't know why kWh and kW is so often confused, one's clearly energy and the other power, which are very different concepts.

...
In this case, it probably is 170 kW, and not a typo. 170 kWh in a car would be considerably larger than your average EV, which on a stripped down race car, seems unlikely. More likely the battery pack can safety provide up to 170 kW of power, and they're drawing another 30 kW out of the regenerative braking supercapacitors for 200 kW total. An "average" supercapacitor can produce 1kA at 2.85V without exceeding nominal ratings, so it's easy to see how they could get an extra 30kW external to the batteries.

I realise that 170kWh implies a huge battery, but if it's two cars used during the race, then each car has a battery with 85kWh - which is premium EV territory at the moment, but certainly possible. Note that the quote is "170kW [sic] for the race" (emphasis mine), and the race involves two cars if I understand correctly. Hence my confusion.

Oh, have seen Jonathan's post after posting this: thanks.

 

[DClark]

aggri1[/url]":2um87zx2]

SmokeTest[/url]":2um87zx2]

aggri1[/url]":2um87zx2]Couple of things someone could perhaps clarify for me...
...
Also, "we only have 170kW for the race", coming from Venturi's head of Formula E car development, is odd. Presumably he meant 170kWh, but alternatively, the battery is limited to 170kW... I don't know why kWh and kW is so often confused, one's clearly energy and the other power, which are very different concepts.

...
In this case, it probably is 170 kW, and not a typo. 170 kWh in a car would be considerably larger than your average EV, which on a stripped down race car, seems unlikely. More likely the battery pack can safety provide up to 170 kW of power, and they're drawing another 30 kW out of the regenerative braking supercapacitors for 200 kW total. An "average" supercapacitor can produce 1kA at 2.85V without exceeding nominal ratings, so it's easy to see how they could get an extra 30kW external to the batteries.

I realise that 170kWh implies a huge battery, but if it's two cars used during the race, then each car has a battery with 85kWh - which is premium EV territory at the moment, but certainly possible. Note that the quote is "170kW [sic] for the race" (emphasis mine), and the race involves two cars if I understand correctly. Hence my confusion.

Oh, have seen Jonathan's post after posting this: thanks.

The cars get 28kWh of power. I think they hold about 30kWh, but if you go over 28kWh in a racing stint you get penalized for it. I seem to recall someone lost a race or podium because of going over the 28kWh maximum.

 

[GopherMobile]

A lot of videos from Formula E available here https://www.youtube.com/user/FIAFormulaE/videos . Pretty cool 360 degree videos from some of the recent races too. They Long Beach Formula E Grand Prix was just a few weeks ago before the bigger regular Grand Prix.

You can hear the sound of them in the videos. Not sure if it sounds exactly the same in person, but they don't make the most pleasant noise - basically a golf cart noise. Not that normal F1 cars sound particularly great either...but seems like a good opportunity for all the exhaust tuning that gets done on ICE cars to instead be used to make the EV cars sound a bit deeper pitch!

 

[iEvolution2]

I didn't see a catalyst converter. Is it still street legal, or it doesn''t require one in some states as in Buckeye state?

 

[Askduds]

iEvolution2[/url]":2z5nkf8v]I didn't see a catalyst converter. Is it still street legal, or it doesn''t require one in some states as in Buckeye state?

What exactly would you expect it to be converting on a car with no exhaust?

 

[iEvolution2]

Askduds[/url]":2ishdum8]

iEvolution2[/url]":2ishdum8]I didn't see a catalyst converter. Is it still street legal, or it doesn''t require one in some states as in Buckeye state?

What exactly would you expect it to be converting on a car with no exhaust?

Ooops, wrong article. I was going back and forth between these two interesting articles from Jonathan M. Gitlin. My apologie.


Packing a “voodoo” engine, the Shelby GT350 is Ford’s best-ever Mustang

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/u ... 80x550.jpg

 

[vnangia]

Darkness1231[/url]":2snqwue8]Ah the FIA. An organization that is at the trailing edge of logic and beyond the borders of reason.

Have you met FOM? They make FIA look the frontier of cool.

 

[Darkness1231]

Llampshade[/url]":1tvtfga7]
Nonsense problems are the hallmark of car racing leagues. The problems of Indy/CART drove open wheel racing to huge lows in the US. Then there's NASCAR. It seems that everything I like about car racing is what the rule makers want to destroy. Maybe the problem is probably me.

The problem is us. We assume logic while the rule makers have yet to consider it.