FIA announces all-electric racing category
The FIA has announced its intention to create a new electric racing car championship that will give brands some freedom to develop technologies for the road.
27/04/2022
The FIA has announced its intention to create a new electric racing car championship that will give brands some freedom to develop technologies for the road.
We often hear that the competition serves as a laboratory for technologies that we will then find on the car of everyone. But in reality, it is ultimately quite rare to see a real bridge between the two. Competition is above all a tool that manufacturers work on their image.
However, that may well change. The FIA (International Automobile Federation) has announced its intention to create a specific championship for electric racing cars, loosely based on the GT3 format. The FIA is already announcing figures, with cars that will exceed "their thermal counterparts in qualifying speed and acceleration" and 0 to 100 in 2.4 seconds, with a maximum speed of 300 km/h.
Above all, the big information is the relative freedom left to the manufacturers who will commit. They will have the opportunity to decide on the capacity of the batteries (which will be supplied by Saft, a subsidiary of Total), their integration into the car, with only a limitation of 87 kWh. Two or four wheel drive, independent torque control on each wheel, front or rear engine, manufacturers will have the choice.
For charging, the FIA has already announced ultra-fast 700 kW terminals in the pits. As a reminder, today, the most powerful terminals that can be found on the road are those of Ionity, announced at 350 kW peak. Double this power would allow racing cars to recover a good part of the autonomy very quickly. It now remains to be seen who will finance these expensive installations on the circuits...