How Formula E has avoided a fatal mistake

Next season's new Formula E car will be a watershed moment for the series, but also offer a paradox: its big technical overhaul contains what appears to be a glaring limitation. The second-generation FE machine will be fitted with a spec battery expected to run from start to finish and eliminate the mid-race car swaps that currently come in for plenty of ridicule.

Eliminating the lack of range in a formula designed to promote electric vehicles is obviously an important step and represents a significant improvement in just four years. But a spec battery in an electric race car doesn't sound very ground-breaking, does it?

The motor, inverter and gearbox make up the 'sexy' sell in terms of what manufacturers can develop in FE. Given it is paraded as a proving ground for the latest technology in the road car world, it's fair to question why it is not aggressively pushing such a crucial component as the battery.

That argument is only strengthened when you consider that open battery competition would have been introduced last season, the category's third campaign, had FE and the FIA followed the first iteration of its technical roadmap. It didn't. Battery competition got pushed back to beyond the seventh season (2021). Now, the series is talking about delaying it past the middle the of the next decade - 2025 "at least", according to FE CEO Alejandro Agag.

This apparent stagnancy could call into question the premise of FE as a technological hotbed. But that assumption is unfair and misses a key point: FE has avoided blindly following a technology path that could lead it to oblivion.

The battery debate is what Audi team principal Allan McNish calls "a trade between what will actually improve the technology, have the interest for the manufacturers to be part of it, and what the championship can provide in terms of return of investment". They will not stick around if they aren't getting anything back for their money, and McNish says battery competition carries the threat of "runaway costs".

"It would be a mistake to make a war of cells in this series. It could kill the championship if someone finds better cells than the others" DS's Xavier Mestelan-Pinon

If FE went ahead with making manufacturers build their own batteries it could bring the world's fastest-growing category to its knees, turning a €20m-€30m formula into something far more expensive as exposure and financial recompense expand at a slower rate. Such a combination would force teams and manufacturers to commit money to an unsustainable development programme, while also risking annihilating one of FE's strongest fundamentals: close racing.

"It can become a technology race in multiple areas that can result in quite high spending and a bigger spread," says Jens Marquardt, whose BMW operation is one that would have access to battery manufacturer infrastructure, because its road-car development programme will soon have a facility that lets it commit to such a project in-house.

"In F1 you somehow have a direct link between spending and performance. The big teams with the big budgets perform really well - the small teams with the small budgets they are far away. As long as it's possible, FE should try to avoid this."

The point is to avoid giving one manufacturer the opportunity to pump endless investment into finding a "silver bullet", as Jaguar team director James Barclay puts it, and risking that others "completely miss it".

"If we open battery technology, it might seem really wise on paper," he says. "But the ultimate consequence could have a really negative effect with the complexity and the cost."

It risks forcing competitors onto a battleground they have no business being on. Xavier Mestelan-Pinon, the director of DS Performance, compares the battery to fuel in Formula 1 - an arena neither teams nor engine suppliers participate in on the frontline.

"We manufacture and design cars, the motor, the gearbox," he says. "We don't manufacture fuel. It's the same for the battery. I think it would be a mistake to make a war of cells in this series. It will increase the budget a lot, and it could kill the championship if someone finds better cells than the others."

FE's current grid can be divided into big motorsport manufacturers (Renault, Audi, Jaguar, DS), emerging marques investing in electric vehicles (Mahindra, NIO, Venturi) and independent operations twinning with road-car marques (Andretti, Dragon, Techeetah). Of that final trio, Andretti's already got a technical alliance with BMW and will become a full works team next season.

In Hong Kong last weekend Sunday's qualifying session had 16 drivers covered by less than 0.9 seconds, albeit around a relatively short lap of just over a minute. Compare that to the second part of qualifying for F1's Monaco Grand Prix, for which everyone bolted on the softest-compound tyres and turned up performance, and the same gap only covers the top five. You can see why FE wants to hang on to its current competitive balance.

"We have an amazing opportunity, it can be an incredible championship," says Barclay. "Some manufacturers will be able to manage [building a battery], but others won't. It could be really damaging.

"The most engaging and successful championships are the ones where more people can win. Although we want to be out there winning every single race, for the overall health of the championship it is about giving everyone an equal opportunity."

One of this multi-manufacturer category's greatest assets is that currently everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. It's a far cry from the situation currently engulfing F1, and while comparing FE to grand prix racing is sometimes a futile endeavour it has relevance here, because complicated battery cell technology is not too dissimilar to F1's complex engine formula.

"What we must ensure does not happen in this paddock is what has happened in Formula 1 where a manufacturer has got exclusive rights to a cell that other teams can't access," explains Jaguar sporting director Gary Ekerold, who has been in the FE paddock from the beginning, initially with Williams Advanced Engineering, the first (and current) FE battery supplier.

"That's the unique selling point. Alejandro has been consistent from day one, the smaller teams will have access to anything else in this paddock. As soon as you get into a situation like Mercedes in F1 having exclusive access to cell technology, and no other team can get it, that's when you get this divergence."

Audi motorsport boss Dieter Gass points out that FE is in a unique position. He argues that F1 is in its own bubble because "rightly, probably, it has such a history that they have never questioned whether there could be a problem for the championship not existing". That means it's not got the same pressure to remain road relevant. But for FE and the World Endurance Championship, it is trickier.

"The WEC was even worse than F1 for discussion because of different allowed concepts and trying to get the rules to get an advantage," says Gass. "There are very few participants and very harsh discussions on those subjects.

"Formula E is a young plant that is growing and the people that have been involved from the very beginning, they know it is sensitive and need to take care of it."

Agag reckons manufacturers in his series are unified in not being fussed about building their own batteries. But it's valid to ask why they're not, given the importance of battery technology to the electric vehicle formula. What's relevant to FE has shifted as the series grows and the technology evolves.

Mestelan-Pinon says that the battery appeared to be the most obvious point of development in the beginning, but "you still have a motor, all the wiring, and the software is very, very important as well". Introducing all-wheel-drive or torque vectoring, and allowing teams to harvest energy from the front axle, are all key discussion points at the moment and represent a much more sensible short-term move in terms of expanding FE's technological experimentation. And the most obvious example of FE avoiding development of what's irrelevant is its refusal to open up chassis and aerodynamics.

"What we must ensure does not happen in this paddock is what has happened in Formula 1" Jaguar's Gary Ekerold

Battery technology is not at the same level, obviously, but its relevance is still dictated by what manufacturers need to learn. Jaguar Land Rover, for example, employs suppliers to conduct the chemistry involved in creating battery cell technology, and JLR is responsible for packaging and integration. It is not a chemist.

There is value in seeking a middle ground between a single-spec battery and manufacturer-built units, though. Just because manufacturers are in agreement that totally open competition isn't something for now, doesn't mean there is no longer an expectation for FE to go beyond a single supplier at some point. Fundamentally, the battery is the next big area of cost and development growth.

An interim phase could be to open up the number of battery suppliers to two or three. Williams Advanced Engineering has provided the single-spec unit for four seasons. McLaren Applied Technologies will take over next season. That's two companies with experience, and motorsport understanding, that have the capability to offer competitive batteries, which would inject more technological competition into the formula and increase development.

But this again comes with cost implications. Teams make a financial contribution to the development of the spec battery and as soon as you move beyond a common battery and split more than one supplier across the teams, you have fewer outfits paying into the pot. The development cost wouldn't remain the same, let alone reduce, because the rivalry will ramp up the pressure to make competitive gains to reduce the weight of the components lighter, increase power density, improve thermal efficiency, and so on. You don't need a degree in economics to work out that fewer contributors to a bigger pot makes for a worse financial situation.

FE could eventually decide that cost implications are a necessary evil. Then the focus will shift to how to control that. The series already implements a powertrain cost cap successfully, which isn't in the limelight because all bar Techeetah are manufacturers, so it's not really being used.

A maximum price on the battery and only two or three suppliers could be a decent compromise as battery manufacturers may be dissuaded from investing tens of millions in the technology if FE teams are only paying a few hundred thousand a year to use them. If the price per annum moves into seven figures then that might change the battery supplier's view, but team budgets will balloon.

This uncertainty is exactly why FE will remain with a single-make battery in the interim. And as Barclay points out, "just because we have a common battery, it doesn't mean it's a regressive step, it doesn't mean it can't be cutting edge, it doesn't mean it's not pushing boundaries. It just means it's common for everyone."

There is a tender to supply the battery and this is a competitive progress - McLaren won the most recent fight against interest from several big name parties (Porsche, Red Bull Technologies and WAE have all been mentioned).

"Thanks to this regulation you can improve the technology with the cells, because you have a tender and a fight before the race, but in the end for the race, it's the same product for each team," says Mestelan-Pinon. "We need to push in this way for the future."

There are still valid lessons being learned by manufacturers around understanding how a spec battery operates and how to get the best out of it. The physical hardware might not be directly transferable to their road cars, but the knowledge is. This also extends to writing the software, which is completely open in FE and massively important to both race- and road-car performance.

That helps push the technology forward in the interim, while a natural progression in the years to come could be a spec cell that manufacturers then build a battery around. Agag also hints that if the cars adopt an additional, smaller battery at the front to facilitate new technologies this could potentially be an area open for development.

Working out the next move is one of the key discussion points between FE, the manufacturers - particularly new ones like Porsche, with road-relevant motives and the infrastructure to invest in things like battery manufacture - and the FIA. And any commitment to pushing technological boundaries will need to be matched with more eyeballs on TV, bums on seats in the grandstands and money in the teams' coffers.

"If you look at LMP1 for example, clearly the spending was in no relation to the return on investment," points out Marquardt, while Mestelan-Pinon says that "if today I spend €10 or €10,000 without anything back, it's not good - what is very important for the future is to be sure the return will grow at the same rate as the cost".

Welcome to FE's future-defining balancing act, an unavoidable consequence of its magnetic pull to almost every major car manufacturer in the world. "They have come here because it's a very cost-effective way of demonstrating technology development to the world," says Ekerold. "If we change that fundamentally over a very short period of time it will create problems."

Unsurprisingly, that is something FE is keen to avoid, which is why its stance on battery competition has changed. Cohesion between its all-star cast members makes it easier, but other series could learn a lot from the behind-the-scenes workings that helped FE make so many headlines in 2017 - and are keeping it from collapsing under the weight of its own success.