Memories of the battle Prost vs Senna in the 80s flashing back …

The following article is taken from here .

Brazilian driver Lucas di Grassi competes in the Formula E ninth round in Moscow earlier this month.

Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Everything seems familiar. Piquet, Prost and Senna are all just millimetres off the ground in state-of-the-art racing cars, their breakneck speed round the track being watched by millions. But something is missing: the roar of engines.

This is Formula E, the nascent form of motor racing coming to Battersea Park in London next weekend for the conclusion of its inaugural championship. Staged in 10 cities and featuring Nelson Piquet Jr, Bruno Senna (nephew of Ayrton) and Nicolas Prost (son of Alain), the championship is a showcase for the potential of the electric car. But despite the famous names, and the $100m that Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag says it has cost to launch, many people may know little about a competition that held its first race in Beijing only last September.

This, however, will change, Agag believes. “We are having an amazing response because of one factor – we race in the city centres,” he said. “If we were racing on a track 50 or 100km from London, no one would come to the race. Instead we already sold over 50,000 tickets [for London] because we bring the show to the people.”

Agag, who has a background in Formula 1 sponsorship, admits that when the idea of creating a world championship for electric cars was floated, few thought it would succeed. But races in Miami, Monaco and Berlin all sold out. Agag said Formula E is already producing “significant revenues”. “Many people didn’t think we were going to make it,” he said. “The first race was a surprise for many. Now we have great momentum, great sponsors; it’s a fantastic achievement.”

Unlike Formula 1, Formula E offers drivers a level playing field on which to compete. The cars, which have a top speed of 140mph, and are capable of accelerating from 0 to 60mph in three seconds, are all built by the same consortium. During the 11-lap races, drivers racing on all 10 teams will make a mandatory pit stop to change vehicle.

This homogeneity is attractive to fans who fret that motor sport has become dominated by the wealthier teams. As Nicolas Prost, a driver for Renault, told a recent TedGlobalLondon audience, the difference in Formula E is made “by engineers and drivers, not by money”.

To others, though, the real attraction of Formula E lies not in the spectacle, but in what it promises to deliver to the wider world. Sir Richard Branson, owner of the Virgin Racing team, currently in sixth place in the championship, believes the sport will push the development of electric road cars, with significant consequences for global health. “We spend a lot of time these days looking to a world that is carbon neutral by 2050, and unless you have sports like Formula E we will never get there,” Branson said in an interview posted on the team’s website. “It’s a tremendously exciting aim and Formula E will pioneer technology that will be used on normal road cars. I hope 10 years from now the smell of exhaust from cars will be a thing of the past, much like the smell of cigarettes in restaurants.” There is an irony at work here. A new version of a sport that helped glamourise smoking is now helping normalise the idea of cities free from petrol fumes.

As the Virgin Racing team explains in its mission statement: “It is now proven that pollution in cities is directly linked to the increase of cancer and other lung diseases. It is critical that we move the pollution from tailpipes away from cities to the power plants where electricity is generated.”

This, Agag argues, was the reason Formula E was established. “We saw that it was time to reinvent motor sport in a sustainable way. Now, for anything to be relevant, you have to be doing something for the environment, the planet. Our aim is for all the cars in the world to be electric one day. We think that by showing them racing, you can change people’s perception of electric cars.”

They have their work cut out. The first battery-powered vehicles were produced in the 19th century but they have yet to become popular – despite the fact they that are far more efficient than conventional forms of propulsion. A car with an internal combustion engine has an average energy efficiency of 25%, because large amounts are lost on vibration and noise. Pure electric cars, however, have an average energy efficiency of 80%.

Agag believes Formula E can drive this message home, especially by reaching out to the younger generation. Formula E includes a feature called “Fanboost”, that gives spectators a chance to vote, via the website and social media, for drivers to receive a five-second surge of extra power during their race. Petrolheads will shudder at such innovation, but Agag is unapologetic about who it is aimed at. “It makes it really interactive. The young fans love it. We want to convince the kids to buy electric cars.”

It’s not just kids in the western world, either. “Geographically, city locations are key for us,” Agag said. “We want to make it global so we have to be everywhere. We look at different cities – some in Europe, some in Asia, some in South America. We’re also looking at Africa and maybe Australia. We want as wide a coverage as possible.” Ultimately, the aim is to turn the championship into a laboratory that will yield benefits for the motor industry as a whole.

“There are a lot of lessons that can be learned that can then be applied to road cars,” Agag said. “After nine races we already have so much data on the regeneration of energy and energy recovery and that is something that can be applied to batteries that are now being manufactured for road cars.”

Improving the battery life of electric cars is the industry’s holy grail. Tim Lawrence, head of global manufacturing at PA Consulting Group, which advises some of the largest motor manufacturers, acknowledges that “the marketing and the hype around the Formula E circuit will help develop momentum in the electric vehicle market” and build on the recent high-profile launches of electric cars produced by the likes of BMW and Tesla.

But Lawrence suggests that whether the industry succeeds willl depend on how it tackles “battery range anxiety”. Many electric car batteries can now be fully charged in less than an hour, but they still cannot power a vehicle for a reasonably long distance. “Battery range is the biggest challenge,” he said. “Currently it’s something like 100 to 130km. You really need to get over the 200 mark.”

At the moment, electric cars account for only between 1% and 2% of the market. This is not where manufacturers thought they would be by now.

“Adoption has been very slow,” Lawrence said. “The Nissan Leaf has sold only something like 10,000 cars across the whole of Europe. I’ve been talking with Renault and Peugeot over the last 12 to 18 months and it’s been highly disappointing for them. Their expectations were much higher than the market has delivered.” How governments embrace the new technology will be equally, if not more, important than whether motor sport helps to popularise it, Lawrence believes. “Some countries, such as Norway, offer significant tax incentives. As a result, their [electric car] adoption rates have been much higher.”

But few struggling carmakers, which remain ambivalent about electric vehicles, are likely to welcome such initiatives when they have petrol and diesel powered vehicles to sell. “At the moment a lot of economies are recovering from a long recession,” Lawrence said. “Carmakers are very much in the mindset of selling product rather than pushing technology.” Indeed, it would be a brave CEO of a motor manufacturer who bet heavily on an electric future when other forms of sustainable propulsion, such as hydrogen, are entering the market.

And perhaps this is where Formula E can really help shape the future, for only in the first year of the championship are the cars identical. From next year, manufacturers will be allowed to start modifying designs. And the year after, they will be able to fit their own choice of battery. In time, the championship could become the battleground where technologies compete to see which can best replace the combustion engine. “I would like the FIA [motor sport’s governing body] to include anything that can power an electric motor 100%,” Agag said. “So it could be hydrogen, it could be super capacitors; we are looking at everything.”