The series has gone from strength to strength, attracting growing audiences and many of motorsport’s biggest constructors, while also advancing the frontline of EV technology. Would people watch electric cars lapping circuits, devoid of the tell-tale scream of combustion engines? How far would the cars be able to drive on a single charge? Would the batteries be safe? Would any manufacturers want to be involved?Ī decade on, and most of those questions have been emphatically answered. But if 10 per cent of the population change their behaviour, it’s a massive change in the world.When Formula E was conceived of 10 years ago, it raised no shortage of eyebrows and questions. You might think it’s a tiny, minuscule thing, and how is that going to change anything. It can be the smallest thing, like separating your rubbish from your recycling, or not even buying plastic water bottles so you don’t need to recycle them in the first place. In terms of people at home, we’re showing what they can do to help the environment and help our kids in the future. We’re hopefully developing the technology for racing on-track and off-track in the future. We’re showing that you can have great racing without a combustion engine. What can the rest of motor sport learn from Extreme E? The only way we’re going to find a good direction is competition from different power sources. We have EV here, biofuels in Formula One. Who knows where we’re going to end up in 10, 15 years? Everyone’s trying different things. They’re really pushing biofuels in F1, which is great. It’s going to be a long time if it does change. It’s a tricky one with Formula One, you know, it’s been combustion engine-based forever. Will the kind of technology we have seen in Extreme E and Formula E, a track-based racing series for electric vehicles, ever make its way into Formula One? The only way to watch is on your TV, which again is a good thing because they’re trying to keep the footprint as small as possible. Jenson Button on the Russell Glacier, Greenland We were trying to gather as much information as possible for the scientists to study it, to try and help and try and understand what we can do to help. You could see the massive rivers that occurred from that melting. Soot sits on the ice when the sun shines and melts them. We saw the ice in Greenland was brown, dirty-ish looking, which was from the wildfires in North America. Extreme E is travelling to destinations that have been massively affected by climate change and to bring awareness to those areas. But we also travel to places around the world I never would have travelled to before. The cars themselves are very exciting with 500-odd horsepower, off-road vehicles, with big suspension travel. “Extreme E is travelling to destinations that have been massively affected by climate change to bring awareness to those areas” In the future, I’m sure we’re moving to solid-state batteries new technologies, but this is a great starting point. It’s about making lightweight but also having enough battery power for the distance we need. We can’t be running around in cars that are four times heavier than their internal combustion engine counterparts. I still want this to feel like a fun car to drive. So for us to push the boundaries here, it was really exciting. A lot of manufacturers are now working with EVs. We are definitely going to have sustainable power in the future when it comes to road cars. A JBXE car leads the pack at the Bovington Extreme E race
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