Ars checks out the future of Formula E at Venturi

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

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[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.