Faster cars. Fresh branding. New teams (ish). Formula E sits on the cusp of the first race of its next generation in Mexico City this weekend and, with such a prevalence of changes from last season, it’s almost like an entirely new championship. Ten of the 11 teams have a revised driver line-up, the entry list features a handful of different names, while the Gen2 cars have been put out to pasture and replaced with the jet-fighter-inspired Gen3 machinery.
Plus, for those critical of the championship and what it comes to represent, Fanboost has been officially killed off. The perception of a popularity contest is no longer there, even though the five-second power boost made scant difference…
Ahead of the season opener, the teams had the chance to unbox their new cars (presumably all the trimmings attached to a plastic frame like a Tamiya model kit) and plonk their upscaled powertrains inside. There are two on each car this year, although only one is used for propulsion; the drive motor has been upscaled from 250 to 350kW, while the front-mounted 250kW single-spec motor will be used for energy regeneration only. That’s 600kW of total regen, and Formula E is particularly proud of the statistics: 40% of the energy used during a race will come from harvesting, up from around 25% in the old-spec car.
That means that the new Williams Advanced Engineering-designed battery can be smaller than the old 52kWh package produced by McLaren/Atieva, resulting a lighter car.
