Formula E: Could electric race cars soon be faster than Formula 1?

With their sleek lines, smoking tires and powerful engines, Formula 1 cars have been the fastest road vehicles of the last 50 years. But electric cars could soon be the fastest on Earth as upstart battery-powered cars Formula E Racing Championship making huge technological strides.

Formula E has just unveiled its fourth generation car, which can generate up to 600 kilowatts of power, equivalent to 815 horsepower. This will allow the vehicle to reach speeds above 350 kilometers per hour. 320 km/h Now.

Formula 1 still has a slight advantage with a top speed of over 370 km/h. But Formula E cars already accelerate 30 percent faster than Formula 1, with the current generation 3 accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 1.82 seconds. As their power and energy reserves continue to improve, the day will soon come when Formula E is faster at tracks like Silverstone or Monte Carlo, according to Formula E CEO Geoff Dodds.

“In the coming years, the car will have the potential to lap at speeds equivalent to or better than a Formula 1 car,” says Dodds. “It's a function of physics rather than a function of our experience.”

One of the main advantages is that electric motors are more efficient. Even in consumer electric vehicles like the Tesla, Kona or Ioniq, up to 90 percent of the energy consumed by the engine goes into propelling the vehicle. Internal combustion engines can only convert about 25 percent its energy into motion, and most of the remaining energy is lost as heat. Formula 1 increased this figure to approximately 50 percent – due to the use of a hybrid engine that runs on both gasoline and a battery, which is charged when the car brakes. But the Formula E car's energy efficiency is 96 percent, and almost half of the energy it consumes comes from charging during braking.

Electric motors can generate maximum torque from a standstill without wasting time changing gears to accelerate. The 4th generation car has permanent all-wheel drive, with a separate motor supplying power to each axle. This could potentially provide even better acceleration, although this also depends on the grip of the fourth-generation tires, which are still in development.

The weakness of Formula E is the battery. When the race began in 2014, drivers had to change cars halfway through to complete the race. Sylvain Philippi, team director at Envision Racing, says Formula E today can build a 1,000 horsepower car that can beat Formula 1 on a single lap. But the battery drained over the dozens of laps that made up each race.

“We still haven't been able to fit the equivalent of 80 liters of fuel into one battery. That doesn't exist yet,” says Filippi. “The beauty of the fuel is that it’s very energy dense.”

Formula E plans to switch from a liquid lithium-ion battery to a solid-state battery in the fifth-generation car, which will provide more energy at less weight. According to Dodds, a Formula E car could theoretically beat Formula 1 in a head-to-head race.

But even solid-state batteries will never surpass liquid fuels in energy density, and Formula 1 could probably win more laps, according to Daniel Auger Cranfield University, UK.

“I'm sure they could have a great race,” he says. “But I think we will still see a case where batteries will be the limiting factor.”

This question will likely never be tested since the two series compete under different rules. Formula E, for example, doesn't change tires at pit stops and has an “attack mode” inspired by the speed boost stars in the video game Mario Kart.

Manufacturers such as Porsche, Jaguar and Nissan will now begin improving the powertrain and energy management of their team's fourth-generation car to make it as fast as possible before its racing debut in December 2026.

Some of these improvements may affect the electric vehicles you see on the street. For example, Porsche is now including direct oil cooling, which the company developed for Formula E in its Cayenne Electric.

Formula E's speed and performance “prove that electric cars can do as much as, if not more than, combustion engine cars,” he says. Graham Evans at business information firm S&P Global, “and at the same time it can do it in a much more environmentally sustainable way.”