Dawn of motorsport's electric dream-New Scientist

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Dawn of motorsport's electric dream
23 September 2011 by Paul Marks

iRacer:quiet but speedy (Image: EV Cup/Westfield)

The groundswell towards an all-electric version of Formula 1 is growing

"REMEMBER the futuristic hum the Pod Racers made in Star Wars Episode 1? That's the kind of sound we want our electric racing cars to make." So says the man who is building a fleet of cars for the EV Cup, the world's first racing championship for electric vehicles. If all goes to plan, it will kick off at the Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca, California on 26 November.

Paul Faithfull of UK firm Westfield Sportscars is building the battery-powered iRacers. Tweaking the cars to produce compelling acoustic tricks is just one of the many engineering issues facing Faithfull and his colleagues as they try to make EV racing an attractive prospect for motorsport fans more used to the ribcage-rattling roar of F1's 2.4-litre, V8 gasoline engines.

Westfield is not alone. In the last year, the idea of all-electric motor racing has reached critical mass, fuelled by the introduction of cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, and the fact that there is no sport doing for electric vehicle technology what Formula 1 has done for gasoline cars.

So motorsport's governing body, the Paris-based Federation Internationale d'Automobile (FIA), is calling for proposals for a "Formula E", an electric vehicle championship it hopes will kick off in 2013. The FIA is now seeking bids from organisations who want to run the competition - with a deadline of 14 October. "Road-relevance really matters to FIA," says its technical director Bernard Niclot. "We want clearer links between motorsport and electric road car technology and believe these 21st-century Formula E races will drive technology development."

Meanwhile, race car builders are readying the contenders. Le Mans racing driver and technology entrepreneur Paul Drayson is collaborating with Lola Cars on the development of a complete electric "drivetrain" - that's to say, batteries, control system and electric motors - for a racing car capable of 320 kilometres per hour. He will also drive an iRacer in the EV Cup.

"Everything from rear-view mirrors, to anti-skid brakes, turbochargers and disc brakes came from F1," says Drayson. "We need EV championships to encourage innovation that will drive electric road-car technology down in price."

In addition, automotive tech firms KleenSpeed of the US, Formulec of France and Quimera in Spain have similar plans. "Electric cars are at a tipping point. It's an incredibly exciting time," says Drayson, who was the UK's innovation minister in the last government.

EV records are falling too. Just two weeks ago, Toyota smashed the electric car lap record at the old track at the Nürburgring race circuit in Germany, cutting 73 seconds off the previous record with a 7 minute 48 second lap time. The gasoline record in a Radical SR8 is 6 minutes 48 seconds. Toyota is currently considering how it might get involved in Formula E - either as a car maker or technology provider.

While the EV Cup won't break any records, it is hoping to develop a watchable sports event. Its backers, UK entrepreneurs Andrew Lee and Sylvain Filippi, are buying 20 of the £70,000 ($110,000) iRacers and will sell the rights to race them to driving teams. "It's a single-car-make race series because we want to make it as exciting and competitive as possible," says Lee. "There are so many different battery and motor types out there that the only way to make an EV race fair is to have one make of car on the track, making the series driver-focused." Formula E is likely to be multi-make, however.

Each iRacer carries 340 kilograms of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries that, for safety, are distributed around the car in eight 50-volt units whose potential differences add up to the 400 volts required to run the twin motors. This distribution means drivers or marshals cannot be exposed to any more than a safe 50 volts in the event of a crash. In Formula E, Niclot says batteries will have to be in crush-resistant cages that cannot breach the driver's survivable cell.

EV Cup contenders will race in heats lasting 15 to 20 minutes depending on the circuit - the most their batteries can provide. The iRacer's software is set to limit the power output to 90 kilowatts to keep the speed down to 185 km/h making sure most race ranges are attainable. If teams want at some later stage to double the length of the race, says Faithfull, they will have the option of buying higher capacity batteries which harness expensive cathode nanostructures to store extra charge.

That will drive the EV price up to $285,000, says Faithfull. These emerging nanotech-assisted lithium batteries are made by firms such as A123 Systems of Waltham, Massachusetts, and Altairnano of Reno, Nevada. The A123 technology is already being used in the car Drayson and Lola are designing to race in the EV cup. It is this balancing of top speed with race duration that is the real EV challenge: while Toyota took the Nürburgring EV lap record in its 260 km/hr car it could not have completed another lap on its lithium ceramic battery.

For most racing fans, the noise is all part of the appeal. At high speeds EVs are far from silent, due to the increased whine of the electric motors and tyres, but the quieter experience may disappoint some. Adding heavy loudspeakers would reduce range, so Formulec in France is thinking about converting body panels into sound generators.

Westfield, meanwhile, is researching the attachment of whistle-like passive acoustic devices to the iRacer bodywork to see how close they can get to the hum of the Star Wars Pod Racers. "If we can make them sound like that futuristic hum, with a thumping noise on braking, that'd be great," says Faithfull.