Mercedes-Benz Enters Formula E Electric Racing This Year

Mercedes-Benz is already in Formula 1 racing and now is joining Formula E, the electric-car-racing series. This week, as part of the Geneva auto show, Mercedes showed the EQ Silver Arrow 01 racer. The electric motors produce as much as 306 hp and drive the single-seat racer at nearly 175 mph.

The fifth season for Formula E racing is drawing in ever-more big names. Rules changes make it more exciting for the likes of newcomers Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, as well as existing competitors such as Audi, BMW, Jaguar, and Nissan. No longer must drivers change cars halfway through to have enough battery power to run the race’s 50-60 miles. Rules changes also allow competitors to innovate more, as long as they stay within the framework — the formula in Formula E — for the race series.

Season five is already underway. Mercedes-Benz and Porsche will join the series this fall when season six — 2019-2020– starts. The season begins late in the year (December, or this year in January) and runs through July. It covers Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and North America. New York (Brooklyn) is the final race of the season, this year July 12-14. There was also a Montreal race through last year, then Montreal pulled the plug on the 2018 race and lawsuits followed as surely as fistfights used to mark the end of NASCAR races.

The car’s specs are pretty sensational, coming as they do from a battery smaller than what’s on the Nissan Leaf Plus or Chevrolet Bolt EV: The 52 kWh battery (kW = how much it stores) produces as much as 250 kW (kWh = how much it delivers, equal to 250 hair dryers set to High) and accelerates from from 0-62 mph (0-100 kph) in 2.8 seconds (a Tesla could do that, once, or twice in a row) and tops out at 280 kph or 174 mph.

The Mercedes car’s power output actually depends on the mode the 900 kG / 1985 pound car is in:

Practice and qualifying, max 250 kW / 340 hp
Racing, 200 kW / 272 hp
Attack mode, 225 kW / 306 hp
FanBoost mode, 250 kW / 306 hp.

With Attack mode, each driver can choose a handful of laps when they can race harder with 13 percent more power. The details are set an hour before the race, with variable (by race) number and duration of the extra power.

FanBoost is a gimmick, some say, with a little extra power (a couple of squirts per race) going to the best, or best-looking, drivers in the opinion of fans at the track and at home.

According to the head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, Toto Wolff (a man who may still miss the rains down in Africa):

Formula E is going to be a completely new playing field for us. But we are looking forward to the challenge of demonstrating the performance of our intelligent battery-electric drives in motorsport and of giving a positive boost to the EQ brand.

Mercedes will field two cars. Formula E is dirt cheap to run compared with Formula 1: tens of millions a year per car versus hundreds of millions for the big show that is F1. If the numbers seem shockingly large, well, welcome to big-time auto racing. Formula 1 and Futbol are the world’s two biggest sports, not baseball or football. Now, almost half the teams are directly associated with the world’s top automakers.

Leading automakers believe that aura of electric racing will help sales of EVs. The Mercedes entry is formally the Mercedes-Benz EQ Formula E team.

By the way, the pictures show the teaser livery (color scheme), according to Mercedes: “Blue accents and the subtle contrast between matte and gloss in conjunction with the star pattern at the rear of the vehicle stage the progressive luxury in electric motorsport.”

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